Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed that moral judgments are often mediated by two classes of brain processes (Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). One class, probably reflecting earlier evolutionary development, consists of processes that automatically alter hedonic states in response to specific types of socially relevant stimuli. A second class consists of more domain-general, effortful processes that underlie abilities for abstract reasoning, simulation, and cognitive control. Often, these intuitive and deliberative processes work in unison to foster decisions in accord with the goals of both; goals that are socially adaptive are often congruent with more abstract moral principles. Certain classes of ethical dilemmas, however, require decisions in which the competition between these two systems becomes evident (Greene et al., 2001, 2004). The structure of such dilemmas often requires endorsing a personal moral violation in order to uphold a utilitarian principle. The well-known footbridge dilemma is illustrative. In it, the lives of five people can be saved through sacrificing another. However, the sacrifice involves pushing a rather large man off a footbridge to stop a runaway trolley before it kills the other five. The vast majority of individuals believe it wrong to push him, even though not pushing him will result in a greater number of deaths (Greene et al., 2004; Thomson, 1986). The reason for this seemingly illogical response stems from competition between the emotionally intuitive and deliberative systems. Neuroimaging has revealed that such dilemmas produce increased activation in emotion-related brain centers, as well as in centers normally used for deliberative reasoning; considering personal moral violations, such as inflicting direct harm, elicits prepotent negative reactions that appear designed to inhibit amoral acts (Greene et al., 2001). The infrequent selection of the logically appropriate option in such dilemmas is associated with heightened activation of deliberative centers aimed at cognitive control, suggesting that the automatic negative reaction must be disregarded if a utilitarian judgment is to bemade (Greene et al., 2004). Given these findings, one might expect that the ultimate arbiter of ethical choice for such dilemmas would reside in individuals’ abilities and motivations to engage in controlled analysis. However, the proposed dual-process model of moral judgment suggests another unexamined route by which choice might be influenced: contextual sensitivity of affect. Affective states stand as momentary informational signals regarding the environment and are multiply determined (Schwarz & Clore, 1996). Consequently, environmental factors separate from any potential moral violations might influence affect at the time of judgment. A close temporal contiguity of such affectively stochastic events and the stable negative emotion stemming from a dilemmamight unhinge the direct relation between a dilemmaspecific prepotent emotional response and choice. Simply put, environment-induced feelings of positivity at the time of judgment might reduce the perceived negativity, or aversion ‘‘signal,’’ of any potential moral violation and, thereby, increase utilitarian responding.