majority-minority relations. I am currently a research associate at the University of Virginia, working remotely in The Moral Injury Lab, and a teaching associate professor in Minority Studies, University of Copenhagen.
Munch-Jurisic applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Perpetrator Disgust: The Moral Limits of Gut Feelings, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Perpetrator Disgust contains a brisk summary of the book’s unfortunate thesis:Follow Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic on Twitter.
“By rejecting the nativist assumption that human beings are essentially good and possess an instinctual resistance to killing, we arrive at a much more convincing account of the phenomenology of perpetrator disgust.”
We may wish to believe that it is against human nature to kill, and that perpetrator disgust represents the revolt of this benevolent nature against violence, but evidence across continents, conflicts, and time periods shows this account is too simple to be true. Page 99 is typical of the book in casting doubt on comforting conclusions. By pointing to instances of soldiers who enjoy war and the careful, systematic manner in which military organizations manage the emotions of soldiers in order to facilitate killing, the page reinforces a central argument of the book: that gut feelings are not reflections of nature, and that a more complex account of the relationship between our emotions and morality is required.
Through the disturbing lens of perpetrator disgust, we observe that gut feelings can be molded in many different directions and to different purposes. Our emotions are biological templates onto which particular values are imprinted. Gut feelings speak to the social facts of our time and place. Emotions, as a result, must be interpreted through a contextual understanding of the concrete emotional episode, an agent’s broader environment, and the available frameworks for interpreting an emotional experience.
--Marshal Zeringue
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