The Role of Emotion in Moral Insight
Creators: name: Alanazi, Thamer Saer T
Publisher: name: University of Surrey
Year: 2024
Subjects: Moral insight
Consumer grade EEG device
Emotions

description: This thesis suggests that emotions may help individuals acknowledge moral issues and explores emotions that may help them be more morally insightful in two experimental studies. It also tackles the issue of measurement by suggesting consumer-grade electroencephalography EEG devices as a viable option for exploring the emotional correlates of complex ethical decision-making. In this thesis we define consumer graded EEG devices as those inexpensive, dry (gel-free), and off-the-shelf devices that have appeared on the market since 2007, easily available to consumers and researchers (Sawangjai et al., 2019).&lt;br&gt; The present thesis is a collection of three related chapters that examined the role of emotions in moral insight. Moral insight is defined as finding solutions to right-right moral dilemmas without compromising one of the conflicting ethical imperatives to honor another (Zhang et al, 2014). Because of the effect of emotions on individual cognition and action tendencies, many scholars have examined the role of emotions in organizations (Gaudine &amp; Thorne, 2001), and in moral decision-making in particular (Haidt, 2001). This work addresses how emotions may help individuals acknowledge moral issues and which emotions may help people be more morally insightful. The thesis also presents a systematic review of literature covering state of the art techniques that can help us identify neurological origins of emotions and their impact on decision making. It applies experimental approaches and bibliometric analysis to these questions by examining the role of emotion in moral decision-making, as outlined in Chapter 1 that provides general introduction of the thesis.&lt;br&gt; Chapter 2 theorizes on the role played by emotional valence (positive versus negative) in moral insight and investigates in what ways levels of divergent and convergent thinking mediate the effect of valence on moral insight. I predicted that positive emotion would affects moral insight through greater levels of convergent thinking. I found that levels of divergent and convergent thinking both matter for moral insight. There was a positive relationship between these levels and moral insight.&lt;br&gt; Chapter 3 reports an experiment testing the effect of specific emotions (anger, awe, love, positive surprise, joy, negative surprise, fear, loneliness, and control) on moral insight. Drawing on theory related to appraisal and action tendency (Lerner &amp; Keltner, 2000; Lerner &amp; Tiedens, 2006), I hypothesized that love, awe, and positive surprise would produce higher moral insight than joy or the negative emotions. I also expected that love would produce higher moral insight than awe and positive surprise, and that anger would produce the least moral insight. Furthermore, I expected that positive surprise would produce more moral insight than negative surprise. I applied these predictions to four moral dilemmas: two classical moral dilemmas and two dilemmas contextualized in the COVID pandemic. We found that discrete positive emotions may operate differently depending on their associated appraisal tendencies. For example, we found that positive surprise fosters moral insight more than joy does.&lt;br&gt; Ideally the conclusions suggested in the studies discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 should also be substantiated through data provided by other measures such as brain waves. Hence, chapter 4 embarks on exploring the significance of consumer-grade electroencephalography (CGEEG) applied for the explicit purpose of measuring emotions and decision-making. Utilizing the Bibliographic Analysis methodology, Chapter 4 underscores the potential of (CGEEG) devices for analyzing emotion and beyond. The literature review spans the years 2003 to 2023, highlighting the device's versatility in not only gauging the level and type of emotion, but also performance and attention. This chapter concludes that CGEEG can efficiently capture emotions, performance, and attention in real-life settings across varied experimental contexts. Its potential for contributing to the research on moral insight is clear as CGEEG device has proven its worth in studying emotions and decision-making.&lt;br&gt; Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of this thesis, presents implications of the findings and offers suggestions for future research directions.