The foreign language effect (Costa et al., 2014) refers to a phenomenon in which the response to a moral dilemma depends on whether it is asked in a native or second language. This study explored this effect with Japanese participants using various types of moral dilemmas. Study 1 adopted twelve variations of trolley dilemmas from Mikhail (2007). Study 2 used seven types of moral dilemmas from ...

Despite tremendous advances in medical care for critically ill newborn infants, caregivers in neonatal intensive care units still struggle with how to approach those patients whose prognoses appear to be the most grim, and whose treatments appear to be the most futile. Although the practice of passive neonatal euthanasia, from a moral perspective, has been widely (albeit quietly) condoned, thos...

Moral emotions have been argued to play a central role in the emergence of cooperation in human-human interactions. This work describes an experiment which tests whether this insight carries to virtual human-human interactions. In particular, the paper describes a repeated-measures experiment where subjects play the iterated prisoner’s dilemma with two versions of the virtual human: (a) neutral...

Neuroimaging data suggest that emotional brain systems are more strongly engaged by moral dilemmas in which innocent people are directly harmed than by dilemmas in which harm is remotely inflicted. In order to test the possibility that this emotional engagement involves anxiety, we investigated the effects of 1 mg and 2 mg of the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam on the response choices of 40 healthy...

The author presents the case that society's efforts to understand the insanity defense and insanity-pleading defendants are doomed to intellectual, moral, and political gridlock unless we are willing to take a fresh look at the doctrine through a series of filters-empirical research, scientific discovery, moral philosophy, cognitive and moral psychology, and sociology-in an effort to confront t...

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues-such as confirmation bias-further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief re...

People's moods can influence moral judgment. Such influences may arise because moods affect moral emotion, or because moods affect moral thought. The present study provides evidence that, at least in the footbridge dilemma, moods affect moral thought. The results of two experiments are reported in which, after induction of positive, negative, or neutral moods and presentation of the footbridge ...

This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics' hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare. Results showed that they exhibited a normal pat...

We present a moral reasoner, Moral Coppélia that combines rational ethical theory with affective states and personality traits. We, moreover, treat human autonomy in the sense of self-determination as well as making a meaningful choice. Our system combines connectionist bottom-up with utilitarian top-down approaches. Moral Coppélia can reproduce the verdicts of medical ethicists and health judg...