Negative moral words vs neutral moral words
Pre-registration
Introduction
This work is part of a more general research project based on the work by Gantman & Van
Bavel (2014, 2015). These authors found that moral words correctly processed more
frequently than non-moral words in a lexical decision task. They called this the ‘moral
pop-out effect’ and proposed it is a top-down effect in which moral beliefs and values shape
perceptual awareness. They also claimed that the ‘moral pop-out effect’ cannot be explained
by differences in arousal, valence, or extremity of the stimuli.
This work was controversial and highly criticized by Firestone & Scholl (2015, 2016), who
attributed Gantman & Bavel’s results to a simple priming effect and rejected the existence of
the said ‘moral-pop out effect’.
The present project seeks to contribute to this discussion about the existence of a moral
pop-out effect by examining, in more depth and in French, the processing of words in relation
to their moral pertinence and their emotional charge.
Goals
The goal of this particular research is to evaluate whether, within moral words in French,
there is a processing difference between the ones with negative emotional value and the ones
without emotional value (neutral), namely, if either is processed faster or more accurately and
can be said to have a pop-out effect.
Hypothesis
Our prediction is that there is no processing difference between negative and neutral moral
words. We expect to find no differences in accuracy nor in response times between them.
Methodology
Participants​: ​20 h​ealthy native French speakers aged between 18 and 60.
Design: The experiment consists of a lexical decision task with moral negative and moral
neutral words. The design is within subjects: every participant will realize the task with all
the words from both conditions.
Materials​: the lexical decision ​task contains 28 neutral moral words, 28 negative moral words
and 56 non-words generated by randomly scrambling the letters in each of the 56 words.
Selection of stimuli:
1. 19 Frenc​h native speakers, all students of the ENS Cogmaster program (year
2016-2017), were asked to rate a total of 6782 french words according to their moral
pertinence (1 to 7, 1 being no moral pertinence and 7 the most moral) and their
emotional value (-3 to 3, -3 being the most negative and 3 the most positive).
2. Words with an average moral pertinence value of 4 or more were considered as moral
words.
3. Words with an average emotional rating equal or inferior to -2.8 were considered as
negative words.
4. Words with an average emotional rating equal or superior to -0.7 and equal or inferior
to 1.7 were considered neutral.
The reason for this asymmetry is we believe there is a stronger emotional charge in
negative words than in neutral and positive words. This leads speakers to rate negative
emotional words with a negative value and neutral words with a low positive, rather
than around zero, value.
5. We controlled for frequency, grammatical category an​d morphological similarity.
6. When selecting, among those words that met the mentioned criteria, our experimental
stimuli, we started with the moral ones because there were less of them. Many of
them belonged to the same semantic family, so in order to avoid priming effects we
chose only one per family. This choice meant to balance the number of moral and
n​egative stimuli of each category: nouns, verbs and adjectives.
7. The frequency of the words was determined by the average of their lemme and word
frequencies in the Lexique.org database. We balanced the average frequencies for
both groups of stimuli.
8. We controlled for word length by balancing the average lengths in both groups of
stimuli.
Procedure
Participants will be told it is a study about visual acuity. The experiment will take place in a
quiet, dimly lit room where participants will complete the task one at a time.
The experimental trials will be preceded by a brief tutorial with five trials of non-moral
words and non-words presented for decreasing durations to allow participants to learn the
task.
On every trial, a fixation cross will appear on the center of the screen for 100, 200 or 300 ms
(this duration will be randomized to avoid a repetitious rhythm). The fixation cross will be
followed by the stimulus word presented in the center of the screen for 50 ms. Then the word
will be replaced by a 200 ms mask of ampersands of the same length as the word (the same
number of ampersands as letters in the word, for example: '&&&&&' after 'droit'). After this
the screen will be black until the participant responds by pressing one of two keys: left arrow
for ‘pseudoword’ or right arrow for ‘word’. Stimuli will be presented in random​ ​order.
We will measure reaction times and accuracy (number of correct and incorrect answers).
Analysis
We will compare accuracy in the moral negative and moral neutral conditions using a simple
t-test.
Bibliography
Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2015). Enhanced visual awareness for morality and pajamas?
Perception vs. memory in “top-down” effects. ​Cognition, ​136, 409–416.
​
Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016). “Moral Perception” Reflects Neither Morality Nor
Perception. ​Trends in Cognitive Sciences, ​20(2), 75–76.
Gantman, A. P., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). The moral pop-out effect: enhanced perceptual
awareness of morally relevant stimuli. ​Cognition, ​132(1), 22–29.
Gantman, A. P., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2015). Moral Perception. ​Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
19(11), 631–633.