Beyond 'Passion Versus Reason': Identifying Person and Feature Attributes that Predict Deontological and Consequentialist Moral Judgment

The Central Tension Principle asserts that characteristically deontological judgments are preferentially supported by automatic emotional responses, whereas characteristically consequentialist judgments are supported by conscious reasoning and cognitive control. Although a large body of research supports this claim, there are reasons to be skeptical. In Chapter 1 I will outline several criticisms of the Central Tension Principle and propose an alternate framework. In Chapter 2 I will demonstrate that consequentialist moral judgments vary as a function of attachment insecurity, a need to belong, discomfort caring for others, empathy for the group (or individual), and the desires of the people involved in the situation. These data support the idea that to understand moral judgment, one must move beyond the emotion vs. reason dichotomy and take into account other features of the situation. In addition, it highlights an emotional route to consequentialist judgment. In Chapter 3 I will demonstrate that deontological and consequentialist responders use equal amounts of emotional language overall when justifying a moral judgment, but deontological responders use more anger language and consequentialist responders use more sadness language. In Chapter 4 I will demonstrate that another feature that influences moral judgment is the amount of effort the protagonist exerts to arrive at a moral conclusion. I will provide evidence that when the actor exerts little effort, participants judge a deontological actor to be morally superior to a consequentialist actor, but at high effort, this difference is eliminated or attenuated. This effect is mediated by changes in the perceived moral character of the actor. Taken together, the accumulated data suggest ways in which the field may move beyond â emotion vs. reasonâ by highlighting the importance of features of the actor, features of the victims, and features of the beneficiaries.Ph.D