The Influence of Smiling on Different Moral Foundations
Clint McKenna, Mary Smirnova, Dan Faraci, Marie Cross
Mentors: Sarah D. Pressman, Peter H. Ditto.
An extensive literature in social psychology suggests that many forms of decision making are based on
intuition rather than reason. Considering the societal consequences, it is important to investigate specifically
the emotional susceptibilities that play a role in moral judgments. Many moral psychology studies have
established links between negative affect and moral judgments, but there are few that consider positive affect.
The present research investigates the influence of positive affect on the endorsement of transgressions
concerning five moral foundations described by Moral Foundations Theory: harm, fairness, in-group,
authority, and purity. Participants (n=130) were assigned to either a neutral or a positive affect condition.
Positive affect was induced through a subtle smiling induction task using chopsticks, which has been used in
previous research to consistently induce positive affect. Each participant rated the amount of money it would
take for them to commit a transgression related to each moral foundation (e.g., whether $1,000 would be
enough to “kick a dog in the head, hard”). When compared with individuals making a neutral facial
expression, individuals who smiled reported no difference in endorsement of moral transgressions on any of
the five moral foundations. These results suggest that positive affect as induced through smiling has little to
no effect on judgements concerning MFT.