Moral misfits: The role of moral judgments and emotions in derogating other groups

This dissertation investigates whether moral judgments regarding other groups’ character, behaviour, and attitudes affect prejudice and discriminatory intentions against these groups. Whether these relations are due to changes in moral emotions is also studied throughout this dissertation. The findings indicate that morality-related stereotypes have a strong impact on prejudice, social distance, and discriminatory intentions towards various groups: individuals infected with HIV, Muslims in the Netherlands, bankers, and Romanian migrant workers. These relations are mediated by moral emotions such as contempt and (decreased) pity. The focus on moral emotions also helped to explain the relation between attributions of blame and social rejection of obese individuals. A final line of studies investigated the role of value threats and moral value violations. Findings show that when people belief that other groups threaten or violate important moral values they are also likely to punish or exclude members of those groups. Again, these effects could be explained by the emotions people reported when thinking about those groups. This dissertation thus shows that the inclusion of moral judgments and moral emotions provides a better understanding of the processes that lead to rejection of stigmatized groups.