Do emotions play an essential role in moral judgments?

Myths of trauma memory: on the oversimplification of effects of attention narrowing under stress

The present article addresses claims commonly made by prosecution witnesses in sexual assault trials: that attention narrows under stress, and that these attended aspects of the event are encoded in a way that ensures accuracy and resistance to fading and distortion. We provide evidence to contradict such claims. Given that what is encoded is largely the gist of one's interpretation of experience, we discuss the way in which attention and emotion can bias the interpretation of experience. We illustrate with issues of memory reports in cases of acquaintance rape, where the primary issue is the presence or absence of consent. We provide some specific illustrations concerning effects of emotion on interpretation of sexual consent. Finally, based on what is known regarding priming effects on memory retrieval and judgment, we conclude with discussion of the potential of some "trauma-informed" interviewing strategies to promote false memories (such as FETI: Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview).

Meanness trumps language: Lack of foreign language effect in early bilinguals' moral choices

Moral decision-making is influenced by various factors, including personality and language. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated the Foreign-Language effect (FLe) in early, highly proficient, Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and examined the role of several personality dimensions in their responses to moral dilemmas. We obtained a multilevel data structure with 766 valid trials from 52 Catalan-dominant undergraduate students who read and responded anonymously to a computerized task with 16 standardized moral dilemmas, half in Catalan and half in Spanish. Results of a multilevel multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that consistent with previous research, participants gave more utilitarian responses to impersonal than personal dilemmas. The language of the dilemma had no effect on the response (dichotomous: utilitarian vs. deontological), decision time, or affective ratings, contradicting the hypothesis of shallower emotional processing of the information in the second language. Interestingly, cruelty features of psychopathy were significantly associated with an enhanced proportion of utilitarian decisions irrespective of the language or the nature of the dilemmas. Furthermore, cruelty features interacted with participants' assessment of dilemma aspects like vividness and verisimilitude. Overall, our findings suggest that early bilinguals immersed in a dual-language context using close Romance languages do not show the FLe and that personality traits like cruelty can modulate moral decisions regardless of language or dilemma type.

Towards machine learning for moral choice analysis in health economics: A literature review and research agenda

BACKGROUND

Discrete choice models (DCMs) for moral choice analysis will likely lead to erroneous model outcomes and misguided policy recommendations, as only some characteristics of moral decision-making are considered. Machine learning (ML) is recently gaining interest in the field of discrete choice modelling. This paper explores the potential of combining DCMs and ML to study moral decision-making more accurately and better inform policy decisions in healthcare.

METHODS

An interdisciplinary literature search across four databases - PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Arxiv - was conducted to gather papers. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guideline, studies were screened for eligibility on inclusion criteria and extracted attributes from eligible papers. Of the 6285 articles, we included 277 studies.

RESULTS

DCMs have shortcomings in studying moral decision-making. Whilst the DCMs' mathematical elegance and behavioural appeal hold clear interpretations, the models do not account for the 'moral' cost and benefit in an individual's utility calculation. The literature showed that ML obtains higher predictive power, model flexibility, and ability to handle large and unstructured datasets. Combining the strengths of ML methods with DCMs has the potential for studying moral decision-making.

CONCLUSIONS

By providing a research agenda, this paper highlights that ML has clear potential to i) find and deepen the utility specification of DCMs, and ii) enrich the insights extracted from DCMs by considering the intrapersonal determinants of moral decision-making.

The role of emotional awareness in evaluative judgment: evidence from alexithymia

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning.

Effects of Core Disgust and Moral Disgust on Moral Judgment: An Event-Related Potential Study

Core disgust is elicited by physical or chemical stimuli, while moral disgust is evoked by abstract violations of moral norms. Although previous studies have pointed out these two types of disgust can affect behavior and spatial dimensions of moral judgment, less is known about how moral and core disgust affect the temporal neural processing of moral judgment. In addition, whether moral and core disgust are only related to purity-based moral judgment or all kinds of moral judgment is still controversial. This study aimed to explore how core and moral disgust affect the neural processing of purity-based moral judgment by using affective priming and moral judgment tasks. The behavioral results showed that the severity of moral violation of non-purity ones is higher than purity ones. The event-related potentials (ERP) results mainly revealed that earlier P2 and N2 components, which represent the automatic moral processes, can differentiate neutral and two types of disgust rather than differentiating moral domain, while the later N450, frontal, and parietal LPP components, which represent the conflict detection and, later, cognitive processing can differentiate the purity and non-purity ones rather than differentiating priming type. Moreover, core and moral disgust priming mainly differed in the purity-based moral processing indexed by parietal LPP. Our findings confirmed that the disgusting effect on moral judgments can be explained within the framework of dual-process and social intuitionist models, suggesting that emotions, including core and moral disgust, played an essential role in the automatic intuition process. The later parietal LPP results strongly supported that core disgust only affected the purity-based moral judgment, fitting the primary purity hypothesis well. We show how these theories can provide novel insights into the temporal mechanisms of moral judgment.

Attachment and the Development of Moral Emotions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

In recent years, the development of social and moral emotions (often associated to pro-social behaviors) has become the subject of increased research interest. However, the relation between these emotions and attachment is less studied. The present systematic literature review (PROSPERO: CRD42021247210) was designed to synthesize current empirical contributions that explore the link between attachment and the development of moral emotions (e.g., empathy, sympathy, altruism, and guilt) during childhood and adolescence. Article exclusion criteria included: studies with participants not living in natural contexts (e.g., institutionalized); studies on mental illness; qualitative research; research that does not reliably evaluate attachment or moral emotions; research on intervention programs; and non-peer-reviewed articles. Only 10 studies were found eligible. Results highlight a present focus on empathy and guilt and gaps regarding sympathy and altruism. The mediator role and positive effect of emotion regulation was noted. Significant positive correlations between attachment security and guilt, shame and forgiveness were emphasized. Limitations of the eligible studies included: representativeness of the participants; causality of the results; and the validity and significance of the instruments (e.g., lack of results reported by various parties involved). The present review aims to contribute to the understanding of an empathic, healthy development, in contrast to the alienation and bullying affecting the youth’s emotional, relational and academic lives.

Challenges in Process Dissociation Measures for Moral Cognition

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) for moral cognition was created to separately measure two dispositions of moral judgment based on the dual-process theory of moral reasoning: deontological and utilitarian inclinations. In this paper we raise some concerns from a psychometrics perspective regarding the structure, reliability, and validity of the moral PDP as a measure of individual differences. Using two simulation studies as well as a real sample of N = 1,010, we investigate the psychometric properties of the moral PDP. We present novel evidence showing that (1) some correlations between PDP parameters are mathematical artifacts, and as such cannot be taken as evidence in support of a theory, (2) there are severe response inconsistencies within dilemma batteries, and (3) reliability estimates for these scores seem to be far below the accepted standards. We discuss some potential theoretical and content-related reasons for these statistical issues and their implications. We conclude that in their current form, PDP measures of utilitarian and deontological tendencies are sub-optimal for assessing individual differences.

Beliefs and emotions about social conventions

Deontic assertions concern what people should and shouldn't do. One sort concern moral principles, such as: People should care for the environment; and another sort concern social conventions, such as: People should knock before entering an office. The present research examined such deontic assertions and their corresponding factual assertions, such as: People care for the environment and People knock before entering an office. Experiment 1 showed a correlation between emotions and beliefs for both sorts of deontic assertion, but not for their factual counterparts in which the word "should" had been deleted (as in the preceding examples). Experiment 2 showed that changing the pleasantness of participants' emotions about social conventions changed their strength of belief in them. Experiment 3 showed conversely that changing the participants' strength of belief in social conventions changed the pleasantness of their emotions about them. These results corroborate the mental model theory of deontic assertions, which postulates that emotions and beliefs about deontics depend on parallel systems that interact with one another.