TITLE:
Dynamic Moral Judgments and Emotions
AUTHORS:
Magda Osman
KEYWORDS:
Moral Dilemmas, Dynamic, Emotions, Updating, Dual-Processes
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.6 No.8,
June
23,
2015
ABSTRACT: We may experience strong moral outrage when we read a news headline that describes a prohibited
action, but when we gain additional information by reading the main news story, do our emotional
experiences change at all, and if they do in what way do they change? In a single online
study with 80 participants the aim was to examine the extent to which emotional experiences
(disgust, anger) and moral judgments track changes in information about a moral scenario. The
evidence from the present study suggests that we systematically adjust our moral judgments and
our emotional experiences as a result of exposure to further information about the morally dubious
action referred to in a moral scenario. More specifically, the way in which we adjust our moral
judgments and emotions appears to be based on information signalling whether a morally dubious
act is permitted or prohibited.