Research participants who were given 2 teaspoons of a bitter herbal supplement made harsher judgments of such actions as shoplifting and library-book theft, rating these behaviors an average of 78 on a 0-100 scale of “morally wrong,” whereas people who had sipped only water rated the scenarios at just 62, says a team led by Kendall J. Eskine of the City University of New York. People who had sipped berry punch were even less harsh in their judgments. The research underscores that what we think of as purely “moral” reasoning can be strongly influenced by intuition and physical feelings.
