The Moralization of Health (Somogy Varga)

Moral judg­ments are known to influ­ence seem­ing­ly descrip­tive assess­ments. Var­ga and col­leagues show that indi­vid­u­als per­ceived as moral­ly bad are more like­ly to be judged as unhealthy and dis­eased, a phe­nom­e­non termed “the pathol­o­giza­tion effect”. Across three vignette-based exper­i­ments, we iden­ti­fy a com­ple­men­tary pat­tern: the “reverse pathol­o­giza­tion effect”: par­tic­i­pants were more like­ly to attribute bad actions and char­ac­ter to indi­vid­u­als described as hav­ing a dis­or­der than to those described as healthy, and more like­ly to attribute good actions and char­ac­ter to indi­vid­u­als described as mak­ing a mirac­u­lous recov­ery than to those who remained ill.