Scents of right and wrong: how odor-induced affect shapes moral judgment in adults and preschoolers

Recent research suggests that incidental affect, including odor-elicited emotion, can shape moral judgment in adults. However, little is known about how this influence develops across early childhood. The present research examined whether pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant odors modulate moral evaluations of care and purity violations in adults and preschool-aged children. In Study 1, 36 undergraduates completed a within-subjects task under three odor conditions. In Study 2, 93 children aged 3 to 6 years completed a developmentally adapted version of the same task. Among adults, odor effects were domain-selective: unpleasant odor increased condemnation relative to pleasant odor in the care domain, whereas purity judgments were unaffected. Among children, analyses by age group indicated that odor effects were confined to the 4- to 5-year-old group. Within this subgroup, unpleasant odor was associated with higher wrongness ratings than neutral odor in both domains, although the overall pattern differed across domains. Taken together, these findings suggest that the influence of incidental odor on moral judgment may shift from a relatively broad pattern in early childhood to a more domain-selective pattern in adulthood. This developmental change is consistent with increasing cognitive control and the progressive differentiation of moral reasoning across domains.