effect of emotion manipulation on reaction times in personal and impersonal moral judgments

background and aim: moral psychology studies investigate cognitive and emotional systems involved in moral judgments. this research also examines the effect of emotion manipulation on reaction times to moral dilemmas. method and materials: this was a causal relational study executed on eighty five randomly selected 18-25 year old students from shahid beheshti university. to investigate moral judgment, 2 personal and impersonal moral dilemmas were administered and for emotion manipulation, 3 groups of neutral, positive and negative valence pictures were applied. this research was performed in 3 stages to evaluate moral judgment and 2 stages for emotion manipulation. to examine the results, anova was done. findings: the results showed significant differences in reaction times to personal moral dilemmas between the first and the third stages as well as between the first and the fifth ones. however, such differences were not significant for impersonal dilemmas. in addition, results revealed out that negative emotion induction, increases the reaction times toward moral dilemmas. conclusion: it seems that the effect of environmental factors on decision making especially moral decision making is related to the kind of emotion inducted and also kinds of cognitive or emotional decisions.