Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments: An analysis using the CNI model.

Abstract

Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments have garnered interest because they demonstrate the context-dependent nature of moral decision-making. Six experiments (N = 727) investigated the effects of incidental happiness, sadness, and anger on responses in moral dilemmas that pit the consequences of a given action for the greater good (i.e., utilitarianism) against the consistency of that action with moral norms (i.e., deontology). Using the CNI model of moral decision-making, we further tested whether the three kinds of emotions shape moral dilemma judgments by influencing (a) sensitivity to consequences, (b) sensitivity to moral norms, or (c) general preference for inaction versus action regardless of consequences and moral norms (or some combination of the three). Incidental happiness reduced sensitivity to moral norms without affecting sensitivity to consequences or general preference for inaction versus action. Incidental sadness and incidental anger did not show any significant effects on moral dilemma judgments. The findings suggest a central role of moral norms in the contribution of emotional responses to moral dilemma judgments, requiring refinements of dominant theoretical accounts and supporting the value of formal modeling approaches in providing more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Scrutinizing the Criteria for Character Strengths: Laypersons Assert That Every Strength Is Positively Morally Valued, Even in the Absence of Tangible Outcomes

“…More contemporary models, such as Greene's dual-process theory (see, e.g., Greene, 2007;Conway and Gawronski, 2013), rather stress the importance of immediate affective reactions, available cognitive resources, and motivation, that may or may not enable rationalist processing. If emotions such as happiness, sadness, and anger (Gawronski et al, 2018) or other factors such as time pressure (Gawronski and Beer, 2017) or even emotion-related damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Greene, 2007) can influence ethical decision making, it becomes not only a question of whom to invite but also of when to invite them. This also raises the question whether individual differences in trait character strengths-such as the endorsement of bravery or kindness-can influence affective responses and cognitive processing in a similar fashion: for example, a certain degree of perceived similarity between actor and judge may lead to more positive evaluations ("It takes one to know one").…”

Some Challenges for Research on Emotion and Moral Judgment: The Moral Foreign-Language Effect as a Case Study

“…31 Newer research has been better in this respect -cf. Baron, Gürçay, Luce (2018); Gawronski, Conway, Armstrong et al (2018); Reynolds, Conway (2018). 32 There are exceptions to all of these generalizations.…”

Personality and moral judgment: Curious consequentialists and polite deontologists (Journal of Personality)

“…Moreover, since Greene and colleagues (2001) originally reported these findings, re-analyses show that the specific pattern of results they obtained was driven by idiosyncratic stimulus characteristics, and may not be reliable or generalizable (McGuire, Langdon, Coltheart, & Mackenzie, 2009; also see Bago & De Nays, 2019). Neural data linking deontological judgments with emotion processing brain regions may seem more persuasive, but it is simplistic to attribute any one psychological function to 1 Another relevant framework is the Consequences-Norms-Inaction (CNI) model of Garwronski and colleagues (e.g., Gawronski, Armstrong, Conway, Friesdorf, & Hütter, 2017;Gawronski, Conway, Armstrong, Friesdorf, & Hütter, 2018), who directly define deontological judgments in terms of adherence to moral norms. However, these researchers emphasise that their model is descriptive rather than mechanistic, and explicitly allow for the possibility that adherence to moral norms may be driven by the automatic "emotion" processes specified in the DPM (Gawronsky et al, 2018, p. 992).…”