Upon reading the study, I was struck by the specificity of the conclusion based solely upon evidence relating the facial movements for disgust and moral disgust. I can understand how conditioned taste aversion would cause facial movement in the levator labii region, as this was something that may have “evolved from a functional role in regulating sensory intake,” which Darwin suggested long ago. Furthermore, I can believe that similar movement in the levator labii region would result from disgust in the unfair conditions in the Ultimatum Game, but how did this movement come to be an accepted construct for morality? Furthermore, in the article you cite, the author quotes Adam Anderson when he says, “Surprisingly, our sophisticated moral sense of what is right and wrong may develop from a newborn’s innate preference for what tastes good and bad.” Do you think this is a fair assertion to make when the journal article from Science says that “anger and sadness endorsement…did not correlate with levator labii region activity,” and that “contempt, another emotion that has been theoretically linked to immorality also did not correlate with the activation of the levator labii region?” Given that previous research has shown that anger has opposing neurological and physical patterns, do you foresee any way to test for other aspects of morality or immorality beyond the facial movements and self-report for disgust?

While I feel that the assumptions being made might be premature without further research, this entry was an extremely interesting read, giving me something else to think about today. Thank you for this post, and I look forward to hearing from you or other bloggers in the future.