The role of emotion in moral judgment

The role of emotion in moral judgment is a relatively young topic of investigation in cognitive science, immersed in a rich history of philosophical enquiry. A brief description of the relevant philosophical history, and the inevitable philosophical implications of this area of study is given. The relevant psychological models are then discussed, before an analysis of the evidence for the involvement of emotion in moral judgment. Two experiments investigating the role of emotion are presented. Experiment 1 involves the misattribution of emotion from the experimental stimulus to an irrelevant source, and an investigation of the predictive value of the Rational-Experiential Index (REI) (Lane, Quinlan, Schwarz, Pamela, & Zeitlin, 1990) for individual differences on moral judgments. Misattribution is seen to occur for impersonal but not personal dilemmas. The REI score for cognitive tendencies is seen to predict individual differences in responses. Experiment 2 is a pilot study to investigate whether the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale is a useful predictor of individual differences in moral judgment. Results show no trends to indicate that this is the case