The Color of Sin: White and Black Are Perceptual Symbols of Moral Purity and Pollution

Three studies examined automatic associations between words with moral and immoral meanings and the colors black and white. The speed of color naming in a Stroop task was faster when words in black concerned immorality (e.g., greed), rather than morality, and when words in white concerned morality (...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2009-08, Vol.20 (8), p.1019-1025
Main Authors: Sherman, Gary D., Clore, Gerald L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Association Learning
Cleaning
Cleaning products
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive psychology
Color
Color Perception
Colors
Colour
Conflict (Psychology)
Consumer goods
Environmental pollution
Ethics
Experimentation
Female
Greed
Honesty
Humans
Hygiene
Immorality
Impurities
Individual differences
Information processing
Male
Meaning
Metaphor
Modeling
Moderation
Morality
Morals
Naming
Pollution
Priming
Purity
Reaction Time
Religion and Psychology
Semantics
Sin
Social Desirability
Stroop effect
Stroop task
Stroop Test
Typographic fonts
Words
Wrongdoing
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Summary:Three studies examined automatic associations between words with moral and immoral meanings and the colors black and white. The speed of color naming in a Stroop task was faster when words in black concerned immorality (e.g., greed), rather than morality, and when words in white concerned morality (e.g., honesty), rather than immorality. In addition, priming immorality by having participants hand-copy an unethical statement speeded identification of words in the black font. Making immorality salient in this way also increased the moral Stroop effect among participants who had not previously shown it. In the final study, participants also rated consumer products. Moral meanings interfered with color naming most strongly among those participants who rated personal cleaning products as especially desirable. The moderation of the moral Stroop effect by individual differences in concerns about personal cleanliness suggests that ideas about purity and pollution are central to seeing morality in black and white.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02403.x