 Nichols’ theory provoked trenchant criticism from Royzman, Leeman, and Baron (2009), who are more sympathetic to Turiel’s view that transgressions involving harm are central to moral cognition. Their most telling critique focuses on methodological problems with Nichols’ work. Though Nichols’ studies were done about a decade after Haidt, Koller, and Dias (1993) had stressed the importance of asking participants in Turiel-style studies whether they thought the action they were considering had caused any harm, Nichols did not ask participants whether anyone was negatively affected by the behavior of the protagonists in his disgust scenarios. When Royzman et al. repeated Nichols’ spitting in the water glass experiment and explicitly asked “was anyone negatively affected by [the protagonist’s] action?” 71% of their participants judged that other guests at the diner table were negatively affected, and those who thought the disgusting behavior was harmful were more likely to judge that the protagonist’s behavior was not permissible even if the party host allowed it (2009: 166–167).