{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,8]],"date-time":"2026-07-08T13:17:59Z","timestamp":1783516679155,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783382400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Psychol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Recent research suggests that incidental affect, including odor-elicited emotion, can shape moral judgment in adults. However, little is known about how this influence develops across early childhood. The present research examined whether pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant odors modulate moral evaluations of care and purity violations in adults and preschool-aged children. In Study 1, 36 undergraduates completed a within-subjects task under three odor conditions. In Study 2, 93 children aged 3 to 6\u202fyears completed a developmentally adapted version of the same task. Among adults, odor effects were domain-selective: unpleasant odor increased condemnation relative to pleasant odor in the care domain, whereas purity judgments were unaffected. Among children, analyses by age group indicated that odor effects were confined to the 4- to 5-year-old group. Within this subgroup, unpleasant odor was associated with higher wrongness ratings than neutral odor in both domains, although the overall pattern differed across domains. Taken together, these findings suggest that the influence of incidental odor on moral judgment may shift from a relatively broad pattern in early childhood to a more domain-selective pattern in adulthood. This developmental change is consistent with increasing cognitive control and the progressive differentiation of moral reasoning across domains.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2026.1834581","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T04:22:03Z","timestamp":1783398123000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Scents of right and wrong: how odor-induced affect shapes moral judgment in adults and preschoolers"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Weiwei","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Education (Normal School), Dongguan University of Technology","place":["Dongguan, China"]},{"name":"Guangdong University of Education","place":["Guangzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuning","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University","place":["Guangzhou, China"]},{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University","place":["Guangzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ziqing","family":"Luo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Shenzhen Longhua District Shangjun Kindergarten","place":["Shenzhen, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Qingqing","family":"Cao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The Affiliated Preschool of Shenzhen Longhua District Education Institute Early Childhood Education Group","place":["Shenzhen, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xihua","family":"Zeng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University","place":["Guangzhou, China"]},{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University","place":["Guangzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"95","DOI":"10.1007\/s12078-022-09297-8","article-title":"Smelling death, loving life: the impact of olfactory chemosignals on life satisfaction","volume":"15","author":"Barnett","year":"2022","journal-title":"Chemosens. 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