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What Is 'Purity'? Conceptual Murkiness in Moral Psychology Kurt Gray1

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What Is 'Purity'? Conceptual Murkiness in Moral Psychology Kurt Gray1 What is purity? 1 Running Head: WHAT IS ‘PURITY’ This is a pre-print of this manuscript. This manuscript is currently under peer-review. We note that this manuscript may change throughout the peer-review process What is ‘purity’? Conceptual murkiness in moral psychology Kurt Gray1, Nicholas DiMaggio1, Chelsea Schein2, and Frank Kachanoff1 February 2, 2021 1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2University of Pennsylvania Correspondence regarding this manuscript can be addressed to Kurt Gray: [email protected] What is purity? 2 Abstract Purity is an important topic in psychology. It has a long history in moral discourse, has helped catalyze paradigm shifts in moral psychology, and is thought to underlie political differences. But what exactly is “purity?” To answer this question, we review the history of purity and then systematically examine 158 psychology papers that define and operationalization (im)purity. In contrast to the many concepts defined by what they are, purity is often understood by what it isn’t—obvious dyadic harm. Because of this “contra”-harm understanding, definitions and operationalizations of purity are quite varied. Acts used to operationalize impurity include taking drugs, eating your sister’s scab, vandalizing a church, wearing unmatched clothes, buying music with sexually explicit lyrics, and having a messy house. This heterogeneity makes purity a “chimera”—an entity composed of various distinct elements. Our review reveals that the “contra-chimera” of purity has 9 different scientific understandings, and that most papers define purity differently from how they operationalize it. Although people clearly moralize diverse concerns—including those related to religion, sex, and food—such heterogeneity in conceptual definitions is problematic for theory development. Shifting definitions of purity provide “theoretical degrees of freedom” that make falsification extremely difficult. Doubts about the coherence and consistency of purity raise questions about key purity-related claims of modern moral psychology, including the nature of political differences and the cognitive foundations of moral judgment. What is purity? 3 What is ‘purity’? Conceptual murkiness in moral psychology Is it immoral for you to have consensual, loving, safe sex with your sibling (Haidt, 2001)? What about selling your soul (Graham & Haidt, 2012), pouring urine over yourself (Chakroff et al., 2016), keeping an untidy living space (Clifford, Iyengar, et al., 2015), or purposefully wearing unmatched clothing (Horberg et al., 2009)? Although these acts are diverse, scholars suggest that they all tap the same construct: moral impurity—or more simply “purity” (Haidt, 2001; Haidt & Joseph, 2007). The topic of purity has seen an explosion of interest in moral psychology: in the 15 years from 2005-2019, 215 moral psychology articles have used the term ‘purity,’ compared with only 3 articles in the previous 15 years (See Figure 1). The popularity of purity paper reflects an increased appreciation of moral pluralism and the rise of two influential theories— the social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001) and moral foundation theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2007)—that use the concept of purity to make their strongest claims. Despite the popularity and theoretical importance of purity, a pressing question remains—what exactly is purity? Here we provide a systematic investigation of purity, exploring how this concept has been understood historically, and how it is currently understood in moral psychology. We also evaluate four key purity-related claims in the field: 1. Purity holds an important place in moral rhetoric 2. Purity shows cultural variation 3. Purity is a unitary and distinct psychological construct. 4. Purity judgments are underlain by a distinct moral mechanism. Our review reveals strong evidence for claim one (moral rhetoric), ambiguous evidence for claim two (cultural variation), and little evidence for claims three (unitary/distinct construct) and four What is purity? 4 (distinct mechanism). As we show, the main problem facing claims involving purity is that purity itself is not well-defined: the field lacks a common and coherent understanding of purity. One could argue that this lack of coherence reflects mere variation across research teams, but we suggest the issue is more fundamental, reflecting a deeper truth about the nature of purity. Figure 1. How common is purity in the field of moral psychology? Number of publications per five-year interval which (1) mentioned moral purity and (2) which offered a definition or operationalization of moral purity related to morality. Data was generated from PSYCinfo. Key words had to be present in the title, abstract, or subject. In contrast to most psychological constructs, which are defined “positively”—this construct is x—we suggest purity is defined “negatively”—this construct is not y. In the case of purity, this negative definition is “not interpersonal harm.” Being defined negatively allows for a very heterogeneous set of acts, qualities, and characteristics to count as purity. Although positively defined sets can sometimes be heterogeneous, negatively defined sets are necessarily more heterogeneous. As Bertrand Russel long ago noted, the set of “not y” (e.g., not cars, not cats, not even numbers) is much more varied than the set of “is x” (e.g., planes, dogs, odd What is purity? 5 numbers; Irvine & Deutsch, 1995). More succinctly, we suggest that purity is best understood as a “contra-chimera”. Purity is “contra” (defined as “in opposition or contrast to”) because it is understood as contrary to obvious interpersonal or “dyadic” harm (Schein & Gray, 2017), and as a chimera (defined as “a mixture of genetically different tissues”) with a diverse set of characteristics and definitions. In this paper, we first review the historical development of the concept of purity. This review reveals substantial conceptual heterogeneity across history, which lays the groundwork for substantial conceptual heterogeneity across moral psychology. We then perform a systematic analysis of definitions and operationalizations of purity across all published papers from 1990- 2019, which provides support for the idea that purity is a contra-chimera—a single name referring to a heterogenous set of understandings defined in contrast to obvious interpersonal harm. Finally, we evaluate the four purity-relevant claims before providing recommendations for conducting future research on purity in moral psychology. A Historical Overview of Moral Purity The Roots of Purity Purity is an ancient concept. The Old Testament details numerous ways in which a person becomes ritually impure (tah-meh), including menstruation, childbirth, worshipping false idols, improper sexual relations, contact with death, consuming impure animals, and even violating clothing ordinances. Although some states of impurity (e.g. becoming impure through childbirth) are transient and easily washed away by a ritual bath, other violations are serious transgressions. According to Leviticus, having sex with a menstruating woman merits one of the strictest Biblical punishments—being cut off from the world to come. Beyond Judeo-Christian traditions, purity concerns are found across cultures. The Haida of British Columbia ritualistically ‘purify’ What is purity? 6 themselves through fasting, abstinence from water, and purging with salt water in order to achieve successes in war, hunting, and magic (Murdock, 1934) The Tikopians bathe before certain rites to avoid being dirty in the presence of god, and chiefs are required to refrain from magic and sorcery to preserve their physical and spiritual purity (Firth, 1960, 1970). A review of the history of the term “purity” reveals a fluid and changeable concept. Early descriptions of purity—at least in the West—come from Christian sermons where the term represented a perfect state of Godliness. In the 1700s, purity became less transcendent, with leading theologians warning their fellow Christians to avoid “sordid passions or bestial desires” which can lead one to lose their natural purity and become “lapsed and depraved” (de Charron & Stanhope, 1707; Tucker & St. John Mildmay, 1805). Later still, Wisconsin’s first Mormon, Moses Smith used the term in a way that blended together conceptions of religious Godliness and bodily sin: “all that is impure must be rejected from the limitless purity of God in the future world” (Smith, 1861, p. 33). As it grew from its religious roots, purity acquired a connection to science. In the 1800s, someone lacked purity when they had bodily deformities or mental diseases. One prominent Phrenologist, Orson Fowler, argued that purity manifested physically through the faculty of “Ideality.” John Harvey Kellogg, who was both a medical doctor and the cereal brand creator,1 closely linked purity to health, noting that impure acts such as lustful thoughts and unchaste actions not only “destroy the body” but also “dethrone the mind” and “ruin the soul” (Kellogg, 1888). Kellogg’s writing on purity revealed not only its perceived importance but also the diverse set of constructs he understood purity as being linked to: “persevering, conscientious 1 Kellogg believed that eating his cereals every morning would promote health. What is purity? 7 efforts to comply with every requirement of health, purity, morality, and the laws of nature, will accomplish wonders in securing healthy children with good dispositions, brilliant intellects, and beautiful bodies” (in “A Source of Crime”; Kellogg,
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