Moral Anger, Disgust, but also Sadness: Examining the Victim vs. Perpetrator Focus in the Moral Evaluation of Transgressions

In two preregistered studies (N = 312), we aimed to test whether inducing participants' attention towards the perpetrator or victim of a moral violation would trigger different emotional responses. Fictional situations were created to focus either on the victim's (e.g., a person being tripped on the street) or the perpetrator’s experience (e.g., a person tripping another). Participants were presented with a series of vignettes describing moral transgressions and asked to judge as quickly as possible whether the emotional reactions of third parties depicted in different facial expressions were consistent with what would be expected regarding the misconduct. We hypothesized that focusing on the perpetrator would stress their poor moral character and elicit distancing reactions typical of moral disgust, while focusing on the victim would emphasize the harmful act and the victim's resulting personal distress, aligning more closely with moral anger. Results provided only partial support for these predictions. While anger responses tended to be consistent across conditions, the predicted anger–disgust contrasting outcome as a function of focus was not consistently observed. Interestingly, sadness was a recurrent response in the victim focus condition, suggesting that empathy-related emotions may co-occur with moral condemnation. Overall, the findings suggest that third-party moral appraisals reflect a broader emotional range that combines anger, disgust, but also sadness.