PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Marczak, Michalina
AU  - Marchewka, Artur
AU  - Wypych, Marek
AU  - Misiak, Michał
AU  - Droździel, Dawid
AU  - Sorokowski, Piotr
AU  - Sorokowska, Agnieszka
TI  - Wasting food is disgusting: Evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging study of moral judgment of food-wasting behavior
AID  - 10.1101/750299
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 750299
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/01/750299.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/01/750299.full
AB  - Food-wasting has a profound negative social and environmental impact. Acknowledging that referring to moral judgment can motivate behavior change, the present study aimed to determine moral intuitions underlying the perception of food-wasting behavior. We developed a set of affective standardized scenarios and we used them to collect behavioral and neuroimaging data. In the main study, 50 participants made moral judgments regarding food-wasting, disgusting, harmful, dishonest, or neutral behaviors presented in these scenarios. We found that wasting food was considered morally wrong and it was associated with moral disgust. Neuroimaging data revealed that food-wasting stimuli elicited an increased activity in structures associated with moral judgment, as well as in regions involved in the processing of moral, but also physical disgust. We discuss our results in the context of the evolutionary significance of food that might have led to seeing food-wasting as a moral transgression.