The Role of Emotion in Judgments of Moral Dilemmas

Background and Aim : Theories of moral judgment have tended to emphasize the influence of either reason or emotion to moral judgment. However, it is quite likely that both of these capacities play a role in everyday moral evaluation. The roles of both of reason and emotion are integrated in the dual-process theory of moral judgment. According to the dual-process theory, cold reasoning processes are recruited when making utilitarian moral judgments, but these judgments can be preempted by hot affective processes that lead people to make deontological moral judgments. Contemplating the violation of a moral rule elicits a strong negative emotional reaction that tends to elicit disapproval toward the violation. However, when violating the rule would bring about a better moral outcome, this prepotent response can be overridden by deliberative processes, leading to utilitarian approval for the action. The signatures of these two processes are thought to be evident in the so-called personal-impersonal distinction. This tension is nicely captured by a puzzle known as the ‘‘trolley problem that has long interested philosophers and that has recently become a topic of sustained neuroscientific and psychological investigation. One version of the trolley problem is as follows: A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people. In the switch dilemma one can save them by hitting a switch that will divert the trolley onto a side-track, where it will kill only one person. In the footbridge dilemma one can save them by pushing someone off a footbridge and into the trolley’s path, killing him, but stopping the trolley. In this study we hypothesized that people are less likely to approve of sacrificing one person to save others if a dilemma requires an up-close-and-personal action, such as physically pushing someone to their death, than if a dilemma requires an action that operates at greater distance, such as flipping a switch that leads to someone’s death or not.Methods : 83 participants responded to two high-conflict moral dilemmas in which killing a single person would save several others. The specific personal dilemma used was Footbridge and impersonal dilemma was Trolley. Participants judged the moral acceptability of the proposed utilitarian action in each dilemma using a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (completely not appropriate) to 7 (completely appropriate).Results : The results illustrate that subjects in personal judgment made less utilitarian and more deontological judgment than impersonal judgment (t=-6.97, p=0.00).Conclusion : People are less likely to approve of personal violations because they evoke strong emotional reactions compared to impersonal actions. Personal dilemmas have two key features. First, they elicit automatic emotional responses that support deontological disapproval. Second, compared with impersonal dilemmas, personal dilemmas elicit greater activity in the brain’s default network , which appears to be involved in the mental simulation of events beyond the here and now, as when people think about the past, the future, or the contents of other minds.

Keywords:

moral dilemmas , dual process theory , personal force , impersonal force