Moral judgment often requires making difficult tradeoffs (e.g., is it appropriate to torture to save the lives of innocents at risk?). Previous research suggests that both emotional appraisals and more deliberative utilitarian appraisals influence such judgments and that these appraisals often conflict. However, it is unclear how these different types of appraisals are represented in the brain,...

The profound nature of moral judgment has been discussed and debated for centuries. When facing the trade-off between pursuing moral rights and seeking better consequences, most people make different moral choices between two kinds of dilemmas. Such differences were explained by the dual-process theory involving an automatic emotional response and a controlled application of utilitarian decisio...

Abstract. Investors sometimes invest in the so-called “sin” stocks that cause social harm as a by-product of doing business (e.g., tobacco companies). Three studies examined whether people who reject and maximize outcomes sacrificial dilemmas approve less investing sin (but not conventional) stocks. We employed process dissociation to assess harm-rejection (deontological) outcome-maximization (...

A decade's research highlights a critical dissociation between automatic and controlled influences on moral judgment, which is subserved by distinct neural structures. Specifically, negative automatic emotional responses to prototypically harmful actions (e.g., pushing someone off of a footbridge) compete with controlled responses favoring the best consequences (e.g., saving five lives instead ...

A growing body of research has focused on so-called 'utilitarian' judgments in moral dilemmas in which participants have to choose whether to sacrifice one person in order to save the lives of a greater number. However, the relation between such 'utilitarian' judgments and genuine utilitarian impartial concern for the greater good remains unclear. Across four studies, we investigated the relati...

YouTube has become popular among consumers as an information preference in the decision-making process within social commerce environment. YouTubers share experiences, information, opinions, and thoughts regarding products or services product-review content, consumers’ motivations (hedonic utilitarian) reacting to how content affect their buying behavior. This study investigates hedonic utilita...

Is the impact of sales promotion on consumer perception mediated by its hedonic and utilitarian benefits in the context of Indian consumers?  Is gender having a moderating impact on the relationship between the benefits of sales promotion and consumer perception?  Authors examined both questions using a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings revealed that hedonic ...