The Role of Emotions in Ones Moral Judgment - Essay Example

This study was conducted by Greene et al. regarding the role of emotions in one’s moral judgment or the effect of emotions on a person’s moral judgment in any given situation. This study was based on some common ethical dilemmas posed by moral philosophers. In this regard, the trolley dilemma and the footbridge dilemma, and some of their variants were presented before the subjects and their responses were recorded along with an fMRI of their brain while they were answering these questions. These two moral dilemmas elicit opposing responses generally; in the trolley dilemma, whereby a runaway trolley will kill five people and a person is given the choice to press one switch whereby instead of five, only one person will be killed, people generally deem it appropriate to press the switch. In the footbridge dilemma, however, whereby there is a person on the bridge who needs to be pushed down in front of the trolley to save five people, though he will himself be killed, people deem it inappropriate to push that person from the bridge in front of the trolley. The question arises that though the effect of both dilemmas is the same, i.e. one person needs to die to save five from dying, however, people are more reluctant to push someone on to the tracks, though not to press a switch. The question that arises in the minds of moral philosophers is: “what makes it morally acceptable to sacrifice one life to save five in the trolley dilemma but not in the footbridge dilemma?” (Green et al, 2001). Green et al purpose that perhaps, if one is to take the approach of Immanuel Kant, it can be said that the reluctance arises out of the fact that in the first example, the person is just unfortunately in the way of the trolley, whereas in the second one would have to literally use him to achieve the required end. However, when the same example is changed slightly and the track is looped so that if the body of that one person does not stop it, it will kill the five people, people still think it appropriate to let that one person’s body be used to stop the trolley. Green et al suggest that there is no one correct solution to this problem, there is still confusion as to why in one case it is appropriate for a man’s body to be used to save five people, while inappropriate in another case. The problem also lies in the fact that there are no moral reasons on which these two situations can be distinguished and there are no set moral principles to guide people in coming up with a solution to this problem. Green et al maintain that it is actually the psychological aspect of the dilemmas that create the opposing reactions to them. The feeling of having to kill someone by physically pushing him is far more emotionally engaging than merely pressing a switch. It is often the difference in emotional engagement to the dilemmas that creates the opposing responses to them. Therefore, Green et al decided to investigate the hypothesis that “Some moral dilemmas (those relevantly similar to the footbridge dilemma) engage emotional processing to a greater extent than others (those relevantly similar to the trolley dilemma), and these differences in emotional engagement affect people’s judgments” (Green et al, 2001). Green et al predicted that the brain areas connected to emotions would be comparatively far more active when presented with dilemmas similar to the footbridge dilemma than when presented with dilemmas similar to the trolley dilemma. Moreover, they also predicted the presence of a pattern of behavioral interference. They predicted that people who would give a response dissimilar to the majority of the people (as in the case of a person who deems it appropriate to push someone off the bridge to stop the trolley), would have a longer reaction time as they would be doing so against their countervailing emotional response. On the same note, they predicted the absence of the same in cases similar to the trolley dilemma as they are “less likely to elicit a strong emotional response” (Green et al, 2001). The conducted two studies, and used 60 dilemmas, further divided into “moral” and “non-moral” categories based on the responses of the pilot participants. The moral dilemmas were further classified into “moral-personal” and “moral –impersonal” dilemmas; this qualification was made based on the “up close and personal” (or more emotional) violation exhibited as opposed to more impersonal violation a dilemma exhibited. Participants were asked to judge whether the proposed action was appropriate or inappropriate in a given situation. In each of these experiments, nine persons responded to each dilemma while undergoing an fMRI. In each of these cases the ANOVA (analysis of variance) detected difference in brain activity in all brain areas based on the difference in the nature of the dilemmas (non-moral, moral-personal and moral-impersonal). There was a longer response time for those who deemed an action “appropriate” incongruent with the others, and the same was found, albeit a longer time, for cases whereby the subject deemed an action “inappropriate” incongruent with others. This demonstrates that there are “systemic variations in the engagement of emotion in moral judgment” (Green et al, 2001). Moreover, a correlation is observed between “(i) certain features that differ between the trolley dilemma and the footbridge dilemma and (ii) patterns of neural activity in emotion-related brain areas as well as patterns in reaction time” (Green et al, 2001). It was observed that, though not definitive, the classification of dilemmas based on them being personal or impersonal was very effective in carrying out this study and helped the researchers in identifying the psychological aspects that ultimately help shape our moral judgments. Moreover, such a distinction may also prove useful in reconciling traditional rationalism and modern emotivism, however, there is still room for further research regarding this mechanism itself and how it will help us alter our moral judgments in any given scenario, not just in examples, but in actual life itself. References: Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293 (5537), 2105-2108. Read More