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Jonathan Haidt, Sumio Imada, Laura Lowery, Paul Rozin,The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A

Mapping Between Three Moral Emotions (Contempt, Anger, Disgust) and Three Moral Codes

(Community, Autonomy, Divinity), “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology” 1999, Vol.

76, No. 4, 574-586.

1. Summary 

(a) Theses

Thesis 1: Contempt, anger and disgust are emotions which are triggered by the violation of 

the rules of specific part of the moral domain.

Thesis 2: Contempt is, most likely, triggered by the violation of the ethics of community;

anger is, most likely, triggered by the violation of the ethics of autonomy; divinity is, most

likely, triggered by the violation of the ethics of divinity

(b) Experimental setting

Experiment 1: American and Japanese participants of the experiment read a list of moral

violations and then chose the most appropriate face that an onlooker would make (contempt,

anger, or disgust) or the most appropriate emotion word to describe an onlooker’s feelings

(contempt, anger, or disgust). The situations represented violations of the three moral codes:

community (community/hierarchy violations), autonomy (individual freedom/rights

violations) and divinity (divinity/purity violations). In all but two cases, the predicted emotion

was chosen more frequently than the sum of other two.

Experiment 2: American and Japanes participants of the experiment were to decide which

moral system (individual freedom/rights; community/hierarchy; divinity/purity) was violated

in the situations presented to them. The exact same list was used as in experiment 1. In 19/27

situations, the dominant moral code was greater or equal than the sum of the other two

classifications.

Experiment 3: The participants were asked to read each of the situations of the moral rules

violation from experiment 1 and produce the face that was appropriate to the situation. 13 of 

the 14 correlations were positive.

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2. Critical comments 

1) It is sometimes suggested, that contempt is not a fundamental but a derived class of 

other-directed moral emotions. On such view, contempt is a blend of anger and disgust. This

thesis is plausible because community can be thought of as an organized, dynamic system of 

individuals, where each person has a particular place. In this respect, community is like

nature. Therefore, violations of community rules can be thought of as violations of autonomy

and divinity rules.

2) It would be interesting to see which brain structures are most active when persons

  perform the experimental task. Especially, it is interesting whether there is a significant

difference between the activity in the structures associated with the “cognitive” processes and

“emotional” responses.