scholarly journals Moral Cognition About Harm in Anxiety Disorders: The Importance of Experienced Emotion

2020 ◽  
pp. 003329412096413
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Emmett M. Larsen ◽  
Rafael Kichic ◽  
Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Dysregulation ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Deliberative Process ◽  
Experienced Emotion

Recent work has shown that emotional arousal influences decision-making in sacrificial moral dilemmas, with heightened levels of arousal associated with increased aversion to committing moral transgressions to maximize utilitarian outcomes. Patients with anxiety disorders experience pathologically heightened states of arousal and thus may be expected to exhibit reduced utilitarian responding on such dilemmas. Extant evidence has been mixed, however, regarding whether anxious patients differ in their moral decisions from controls, and no study has conducted a careful examination of emotions experienced during decision-making. We administered sacrificial moral dilemmas to a cohort of 95 patients from across the spectrum of anxiety disorders to test whether they differed from matched controls on a) utilitarian decision-making, and b) ratings of experienced emotion during the moral deliberative process. Results showed no group differences between patients and controls on endorsement of utilitarian sacrificial action or on reported experience of emotionality during the experiment. Additionally, exploratory analysis revealed that specific emotions were correlated with utilitarian judgments. These results are in line with the Dual Process Theory model’s prediction that decreased utilitarian responding will be concomitant with an increased emotional arousal. Our findings support past work indicating that moral cognition is intact in anxiety disorders despite the emotional dysregulation characteristic of anxious psychopathology. Future work would benefit from the use of process-dissociation techniques to further clarify whether emotional or cognitive processes may differ in anxiety disorders during moral cognition.

scholarly journals Iterative dilemmas demonstrate that there is more to sacrificial harm than utilitarianism and deontology.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dries Hannes Bostyn ◽  
Arne Roets
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Automatic Process ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Single Shot ◽  
Deliberative Process ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Do No Harm

When are sacrificial harms morally appropriate? The dual process model for moral cognition states that peoples’ judgments of sacrificial harm are driven by two competing processes: a fast, automatic process leading to deontological “do no harm” judgments, and a slower, deliberative process leading to utilitarian “minimize overall harm” judgments. Traditionally, research within moral psychology has investigated this issue by asking participants to render moral judgments on single-shot, sacrificial dilemmas. The present series of studies goes beyond this limitation by presenting participants with iterative versions of sacrificial dilemmas that involve the same set of targets across multiple iterations. Using this novel approach, and across four preregistered studies (n = 1538), we provide clear evidence that participants’ moral judgments are often motivated by a third, distinct moral concern that is not captured by the utilitarianism versus deontology dichotomy: a concern to spread out harm across all possible targets.

Reasoning beyond Consequences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Doctrine Of Double Effect ◽  
Post Hoc

Experimental research demonstrates that moral judgment involves both conscious and unconscious reasoning or inference that is not mere post-hoc rationalization. The evidence suggests in particular that we treat as morally significant more than the consequences of a person’s actions, including characteristically deontological distinctions between: intentional vs. accidental outcomes, actions vs. omissions, and harming as a means vs. a byproduct (familiar from the Doctrine of Double Effect). And the relevant empirical evidence relies on more than responses to unrealistic moral dilemmas characteristic of the trolley problem. The result is an extremely minimal dual process model of moral judgment on which we at least compute both an action’s outcomes and the actor’s role in bringing them about. This view resembles the famous linguistic analogy (or moral grammar hypothesis) in only its least controversial aspects, particularly the emphasis on unconscious reasoning in moral cognition.

scholarly journals Moral cognition about harm in anxiety disorders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Emmett Larsen ◽  
Rafael Kichic ◽  
Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Common ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
And Behavior

Emotion has long been understood to play an important role in motivating moral beliefs and behavior. Recent work has shown that level of emotional arousal exerts a strong influence on decision-making in sacrificial moral dilemmas, with heightened levels of arousal associated with increased aversion to committing moral transgressions to maximize utilitarian outcomes. Patients with anxiety disorders share the common experience of pathologically heightened states of arousal, which generates the hypothesis that anxious patients would exhibit reduced proclivities to endorse utilitarian responses on such dilemmas. Limited extant work has shown mixed evidence, however, and most investigations have focused on only specific diagnostic groups, such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. We investigated a cohort of 95 patients from across the spectrum of anxiety disorders to test this hypothesis. Results showed no group differences between patients and controls on endorsement of utilitarian sacrificial action or on reported experience of emotionality during the experiment. Potential explanations for these null findings are explored.

Framing Morality: How Antecedent-Focused Strategies Can Shape Moral Judgments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
First Response ◽  
High Conflict

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.

scholarly journals HR Managers’ Emotions in Strategic Decision-Making Events: Evidence from Croatia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 845
Author(s):  
Marli Gonan Božac ◽  
Katarina Kostelić
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Strategic Decision Making ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Human Resource Managers ◽  
Organizational Perspective ◽  
Hr Managers ◽  
Experienced Emotion

The inclusion of emotions in the strategic decision-making research is long overdue. This paper deals with the emotions that human resource managers experience when they participate in a strategic problem-solving event or a strategic planning event. We examine the patterns in the intensity of experienced emotions with regard to event appraisal (from a personal perspective and the organization’s perspective), job satisfaction, and coexistence of emotions. The results reveal that enthusiasm is the most intensely experienced emotion for positively appraised strategic decision-making events, while frustration is the most intensely experienced emotion for negatively appraised problem-solving events, as is disappointment for strategic planning. The distinction between a personal and organizational perspective of the event appraisal reveals differences in experienced emotions, and the intensity of experienced anger is the best indicator of the difference in the event appraisals from the personal and organizational perspective. Both events reveal the variety of involved emotions and the coexistence of—not just various emotions, but also emotions of different dominant valence. The findings indicate that a strategic problem-solving event triggers greater emotional turmoil than a strategic planning event. The paper also discusses theoretical and practical implications.

scholarly journals Measurement issues of shared decision making in mental health: challenges and opportunities

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 214-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilisbeth Perestelo-Perez ◽  
Amado Rivero-Santana ◽  
Yolanda Alvarez-Perez ◽  
Yaara Zisman-Ilani ◽  
Emma Kaminskiy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Shared Decision Making ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Psychometric Validation ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Deliberative Process ◽  
Content Type

Purpose Shared decision making (SDM) is a model of health care in which patients are involved in the decision-making process about their treatment, considering their preferences and concerns in a deliberative process with the health care provider. Many existing instruments assess the antecedents, process, or the outcomes of SDM. The purpose of this paper is to identify the SDM-related measures applied in a mental health context. Design/methodology/approach The authors performed a systematic review in several electronic databases from 1990 to October 2016. Studies that assessed quantitatively one or more constructs related to SDM (antecedents, process, and outcomes) in the field of mental health were included. Findings The authors included 87 studies that applied 48 measures on distinct SDM constructs. A large majority of them have been developed in the field of physical diseases and adapted or directly applied in the mental health context. The most evaluated construct is the SDM process in consultation, mainly by patients’ self-report but also by external observer measures, followed by the patients’ preferences for involvement in decision making. The most applied instrument was the Autonomy Preference Index, followed by the Observing Patient Involvement in Decision Making (OPTION) and the Control Preferences Scale (CPS). The psychometric validation in mental health samples of the instruments identified is scarce. Research limitations/implications The bibliographic search is comprehensive, but could not be completely exhaustive. Effort should be invested in the development of new SDM for mental health tools that will reflect the complexity and specific features of mental health care. Originality/value The authors highlight several limitations and challenges for the measurement of SDM in mental health care.

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