Rationalization and Reflection Differentially Modulate Prior Attitudes Toward the Purity Domain

Outside Western, predominantly secular-liberal environments, norms restricting bodily and sexual conduct are widespread. Moralization in the so-called purity domain has been treated as evidence that some putative violations are victimless. However, respondents themselves disagree: They often report that private yet indecent acts incur self-harm, or harm to one's family and the wider community-a result which we replicate in Study 1. We then distinguish two cognitive processes that could generate a link between harmfulness and immorality, and recreate them in Studies 2 and 3: Colombian and British participants were randomly assigned to either reflect (decide whether acts are harmful and reconsider their initial moral judgments) or rationalize (decide whether acts are immoral and reconsider their initial harmfulness beliefs). In both countries, reflection promoted opposition to unjust, but not impure, behavior. Additionally, in both countries, ruminating on the moral status of impure acts elevated beliefs in the acts' harmfulness. We conclude by suggesting that rationalization aggravates, while reflection mitigates, intergroup disagreement regarding putative violations of purity and decency.