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The impact of the Extraversion-Introversion personality traits and emotions in a moral decision-making task
Personality and Individual Differences 158 (2020) 109840
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The impact of the Extraversion-Introversion personality traits and emotions in a moral decision-making task Tao Yanqianga,1, Cai Yingb,1, Rana Chandnic, Zhong Yuana,
T
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a
School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China Student of Development Guidence Center, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China c Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York 10010, United States b
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Emotion Extraversion-introversion personality traits Moral decision-making
Behavioural studies have previously examined the fundamental psychological processes behind two moral dilemma types (e.g., impersonal vs. personal dilemmas) across conditions (e.g., emotion or cognition, etc.). However, it is unknown how individual personality traits influence moral decisions by inducing emotions. The goal of the present study was to examine whether different personality traits interact with different types of moral dilemmas by inducing emotions in moral decisions. 100 participants performed a moral decision-making task and data were analyzed using mixed-model ANOVA. The result revealed that when faced with personal moral dilemmas, introverted individuals will make more utilitarian decisions when experiencing induced negative emotion, supporting the hypothesis that moral types, emotional valence, and personality traits can play an essential role in moral decision-making.
1. Introduction Moral decision-making research seeks to understand how people make decisions in the face of moral dilemmas (Bartels, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Tappin & Capraro, 2018). Is a decision primarily evoked from reason, or instead by intuition? Philosophers have focused their efforts on defending each side of the debate for centuries (Kant, 2002). Traditional moral development theory stresses the role of reasoning and cognition in mature moral decision-making (Turiel, 1983), whereas recent studies attach great importance to intuition or automatic emotional processes (Green & Haidt, 2002; Helion & Ochsner, 2018). A common strategy for studying moral decision is to use sacrificial dilemma scenarios in which participants are asked to decide whether they can sacrifice the life of one person (or group of people) to save a larger group of people or not. One of the most widely used sacrificial dilemmas is the classic "trolley problem" in which a runaway trolley is headed down a bifurfacted track towards a group of five people while there is a single individual on the other track. In the "switch dilemma" of the trolley problem, participants are asked to indicate whether it is acceptable or unacceptable to change the direction of the trolley to an alternate route and sacrifice the life of a single individual. This would be acceptable from a utilitarian standpoint, as it minimizes the total possible harm (e.g., the response of killing one person to save more is
acceptable). Hence, the utilitarian perspective lies on the principle of consequences. In the "footbridge dilemma" of the trolley problem, participants happen to be standing next to a stronger man on the footbridge, overlooking the entire trolley track, and he or she must decide whether or not to save five people by pushing the stronger man onto the trolley track to stop the trolley. These dilemmas would be unacceptable according to the principle of deontology, which treats morality as a duty or a set of universal norms stipulating what is right or wrong (e.g., the response of killing a person is unacceptable, even if it saves several other people). In essence, the deontological perspective uses the principles of morality. This dichotomy has sparked great interest among social psychologists, behavioural economists, and neuroscientists in exploring the internal mechanism behind moral judgment and decision-making (Valdesolo & Desteno, 2010). Previous studies have examined the relevance of the fundamental processes of the two types of moral decision-making by calculating the proportion across groups or conditions (e.g., the probability of rescuing five other people by sacrificing one person, Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom & Cohen, 2008). However, participants often view the decision to push the strong man onto the track as being far more morally unacceptable than the decision to divert the runaway trolley (Cushman, Young & Hauser, 2006).
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Corresponding author at: 122, Ninghai Road, Nanjing 210097, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Zhong). 1 Equal contributors https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840 Received 28 March 2019; Received in revised form 7 January 2020; Accepted 13 January 2020 0191-8869/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Personality and Individual Differences 158 (2020) 109840
Y. Tao, et al.
personality traits group (26 females and 24males, Mage = 21.56, SD = 2.01, ages range 19 to 26) and extroverted personality traits group (29 females and 21males, Mage = 21.70, SD = 1.98, ages range 19 to 28). At the present study, participants were given informed consent and signed it voluntarily. All participants were right-handed, native Chinese speakers who had no history of neurological or psychiatric disease and have never participated in other relevant experiments about this study. After the experiment, we offered participants psychological counselling for any adverse reactions caused by the emotional induction and moral dilemma decision-making and paid□20.
The critical differences between these dilemmas are well known yet challenging to identify, though one explanation underscores the impersonal nature of the switch dilemma and the personal nature of the footbridge dilemma. According to Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley and Cohen (2001), personal dilemmas require agents to directly harm one or more people to achieve a specific goal. Conversely, impersonal dilemmas involve indirectly inflicting harm from one person or a group to another. The difference in decision-making between two moral dilemma types is thought to be attributed to more robust emotional processes triggered during personal moral dilemmas than impersonal moral dilemmas. The thought of pushing another person to their death may be more emotionally salient than merely flipping a switch in spite of ultimately producing similar consequences (i.e., one person will die so that five other people will stay alive). Therefore, emotional salience is likely a key factor to moral decision-making in these dilemmas and has been argued to be fundamental to moral judgments (Moore, Lee, Clark & Conway, 2011). However, recent research suggests that moral decision-making in sacrificial dilemmas may be more closely related to a lack of concern about harming others and deficits in processing social information than to a greater capacity for deliberative reasoning (Balash & Falkenbach, 2018). In other words, moral decision-making may be affected not only by manipulations of processing styles and conditions but also by differences in information processing across individuals. Consequently, it is crucial to ask why certain individuals tend towards deontological decision-making, while others tend towards utilitarian decision-making. For example, researches have frequently shown that dark personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, Machiavellianism) are positively associated with the tendency to endorse utilitarian decisionmaking, and incidentally linked to empathy deficits (Glenn, Koleva, Iyer, Graham & Ditto, 2010; Patil, 2015). Individuals with aversive personality traits may be primarily guided by maximizing their own personal benefit, rather than maximizing the welfare of a larger group (Kahane, Everett, Earp, Farias & Savulescu, 2015). Sacrificial dilemmas may force these individuals to make moral decisions based on the view that harm to others is never acceptable and another view that it is acceptable to harm one person in order to save more lives. Although these results do not entirely reflect the moral decision-making of individuals with dark personality traits, the decision of sacrificing one life to save multiple lives is at the very least more in line with the logic that such individuals use when making decisions. As noted above, the question here is: Why do people typically say “yes” to switch the trolley, but “no” to pushing the stronger man? In this study, first, we will address and explore the role of emotion in moral decision-making by replicating previous findings based on the dual-process theory. Second, in light of individual differences in moral decision-making, we aim to explore the relationship between personality traits and moral dilemma types, which can reveal which traits are linked to more utilitarian decisions, and follow existing principles without changing the original results. Lastly, we seek to explore whether emotions can interact with different personality traits in different moral dilemmas by a moral decision-making task.
2.2. Materials 2.2.1. Eysenck personality questionnaire Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is a self-report scale questionnaire to assess personality traits (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). The number of items in the revised version in China was changed from 107 to 88 (Qian, Wu, Zhu & Zhang, 2000), including four subscales: internal and external propensity scale (E), neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P), and validity scale (L). The reliability of E, N, and L scales is between 0.74 and 0.78. However, the P scale reliability is between 0.54 and 0.60, suggesting that EP makes RSC inherit not only the advantage of the original questionnaire with high reliability of E, N and L scale, but it also retains the disadvantage of an unstable P scale. In this study, the internal consistency for the full scale in the current sample is α = 0.81. 2.2.2. Emotional evaluation The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Huang, Yang & Li, 2003; Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988), a 20-item self-report measure of participants' current mood based on different feelings and emotions, includes items rated on a 5-point Likert-scale (1 = very sightly or not at all, 5 = very extremely). It is composed of two dimensions: positive affect (PA: e.g., “excited,” “proud”) and negative affect (NA: e.g., “distressed,” “ashamed”). Considering the cultural difference, we deleted the item “alert” at the positive dimension. The internal consistency with Cronbach's α value for the current study is, α=0.87 (PANAS-Total); α=0.74 (PA); α=0.80 (NA), respectively. 2.2.3. Mood induction Thirty-two students from a university in Harbin (the students were not allowed to participate in the final experiment) were randomly divided into two groups of 16 people each (i.e., group one and group two). The ratio of male to female in the two groups was 1:1. Based on expert evaluation and previous research (Ping, Lu & Min, 2012), we selected four videos, two for the positive emotion group and two for negative. Group one watched the positive emotion clips first and then the negative videos, while group two watched negative video clips before positive. It has been previously indicated that the pleasant mood evoked by positive video would last roughly 8 min, and the negative mood evoked by the negative video would last 2–4 min (Zheng, 2004). To avoid the interference, there was a 10 min delay between presentations of each video clip. The procedure of mood induction is shown in Fig. 1 (Part A). The positive videos are "The Story of McDull" (5 min. and 25 s) and "Unlucky Gopher" (3 min. and 22 s), and the negative videos are "Tangshan Earthquake" (7 min. and 22 s) and "1942″ (5 min. and 36 s). The results indicate that "The Story of McDull" has a significant difference on the PA dimension (t(16) = −2.331, p <0.05, Cohen's d = 0.58, β = 0.59) and the "Tangshan Earthquake" had a significant difference in the NA dimension (t(16) = −3.757, p <0.05, Cohen's d = 0.89, β = 0.91). Preliminary analysis led us to choose "The Story of McDull" to evoke positive emotion and “Tangshan Earthquake" to evoke negative emotion.
2. Method 2.1. Participants In this research, we distributed 484 Eysenck Personality questionnaires. After eliminating the invalid questionnaires, we reserved 471 questionnaires. The statistical calculation of the raw scores of the data, the number of people with a neurotic (N) level of the middle (5 ≤ N ≤ 8) is 210, and with the internal/external (E) scores less than the median (< 5) is 68, and with E scores higher than the median (> 8) is 82. Given this, 100 participants met the experimental requirements and divided into two groups of 50 each randomly. This included an introverted 2
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Fig. 1. The procedure of the experiment.
the participants in the experiment are shown in Table 1. For both the extroverted and introverted trait group, there was no significant difference in Age, EPQ-E, EPQ-N, and Gender between the positive and negative emotion group.
2.2.4. Moral judgment A battery of 60 moral dilemmas was adapted and translated from Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley and Cohen (2004). In light of cultural differences, expert consultation and back-translation were sought from three psychology teachers and four English major students, respectively. Ultimately, we excluded 5 dilemmas and used 55 hypothetical dilemmas (20 non-morals, 18 personal moral dilemmas, and 17 impersonal dilemmas). In the moral decision-making task, participants are required to read a series of moral dilemma scenarios. After reading each dilemma, they were asked whether the described action would be acceptable or unacceptable with a “Yes” or “No” response for each dilemma. There are no time limits for the response. The answer “Yes” represents utilitarian choise and “No” represents the deontological choice. The moral decision-making task was conducted via E-Prime2.0 to quantify the number of utilitarian and deontological decisions.
3.2. Emotional effects As depicted in Table 2, the results show that there are significant differences between the positive emotion group and negative emotion group within the extroverted and introverted groups. The above results indicated that the video material we used to induce emotions has the desired effect. 3.3. Utilitarian and deontological moral decision making First, we examined whether there is an interaction between different personality traits and different types of moral dilemmas by inducing emotions in utilitarian moral decision. We conducted a 2 (Personality Traits: Extraverted Group versus Introverted Group) x 2 (Emotional Valence: Positive Emotion versus Negative Emotion) x 2 (Moral Dilemma: Impersonal versus Personal) mixed-model ANOVA with the first and second-factor between-subjects and the third-factor within-subjects. Consistent with our predictions, this analysis revealed a significant main effect of the factor “Dilemma Type” (F (1,96) = 5.989, p = .016, ηp² = 0.059): overall, participants more often made utilitarian decisions in impersonal dilemmas (M impersonal = 7.260, SD = 1.813) than in personal dilemmas (M personal = 6.700, SD = 2.513). There was a main effect of the factor “Personality Traits’’
2.2.5. Procedure The participants completed the emotional self-assessment once prior to the experiment and once after viewing specific videos for arousing a corresponding emotion. The sequence of scenarios for the moral decision-making procedure is shown in Fig. 1(Part B). 3. Result 3.1. Demographic characteristics The results of demographic characteristics and personality traits of Table 1. Demographic homogeneity test. Variables
Personality traits
Positive Group (n = 25)
Negative Group (n = 25)
t/χ2
df
Age
Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group
21.72 ± 2.05 21.80 ± 2.10 13.96 ± 3.09 4.28 ± 1.06 6.16 ± 0.94 5.88 ± 0.83 13/12 9/16
21.40 ± 2.00 21.72 ± 2.01 12.44 ± 2.57 4.52 ± 1.42 6.16 ± 1.11 6.04 ± 0.79 11/14 12/13
−0.558(t) .138(t) −1.892(t) −0.678(t) .000(t) −0.697(t) .165(χ2) .571(χ2)
48 48 48 48 48 48 1 1
EPQ-E EPQ-N Gender (M/F)
3
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Table 2. Descriptive statistics and tests of emotionally induced effects. Group Extraversion Group
Positive Group
Negative Group
Introversion Group
Positive Group
Negative Group
PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos
M ± SD
t
df
Cohen's d
β
14.20 ± 3.25 22.60 ± 6.16 12.92 ± 4.01 10.92 ± 1.68 23.64 ± 7.60 17.84 ± 4.36 11.72 ± 2.94 19.96 ± 7.50 12.68 ± 3.12 19.28 ± 4.01 12.48 ± 1.69 10.76 ± 0.88 18.40 ± 8.84 15.04 ± 4.64 12.68 ± 3.62 21.56 ± 6.99
−9.333***
24
1.865
1.000
3.517**
24
.703
.998
4.736***
24
.923
1.000
−7.142***
24
1.427
1.000
−6.218***
24
1.242
1.000
5.785***
24
1.154
1.000
5.360***
24
.564
.772
−8.407***
24
1.640
1.000
** p<.010; *** p<.001.
SD = 0.215). There was a main effect of the factor “Personality Traits” (F(1,96) = 14.067, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128): overall, the extroverted participants made more deontological decisions (M extrovert = 11.130, SD = 2.639) compared to the introverted participants (M in-
(F(1,96) = 14.067, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128): overall, the extroverted participants made fewer utilitarian decisions (M extrovert = 6.370, SD = 1.860) compared to the introverted participants (M introvert = 7.590, SD = 1.402). The result of this analysis also revealed the main effect of “Emotional Valence” (F(1,96) = 4.370, p = .039, ηp²
= 0.044): overall, the participants with negative emotion (M negative = 7.320, SD = 1.758) made more utilitarian decisions than the participants with positive emotion (M positive = 6.640, SD = 1.690). The result revealed a significant interaction between the “Personality Traits” and “Dilemma Type” (F(1,96) = 28.427, p = .000, ηp² = 0.228), post-hoc tests comfirmed that extroverted participants making utilitarian decision was significantly higher in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 7.260) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 5.480). On the other hand, introverted participants making utilitarian decisions was significantly fewer in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 7.260) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 7.920). However, there was no interaction between the personality traits and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 0.095, p = .759, ηp² = 0.001). Considering each emotional valence separately, there was no interaction between dilemma type and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 3.056, p = .084, ηp² = 0.031). However, we calculated a significant interaction between the personality traits, dilemma type and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 4.041, p = .047, ηp² = 0.040). Pairwise comparisons indicated that the extroverted participants with positive induced emotion made more utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 6.840) than in the personal dilemma (M = 5.120) condition (F(1,96) = 14.126, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128). Similarly, the extroverted participants with negative induced emotion made more utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.680) than in the personal dilemma (M = 5.840) condition (F(1,96) = 16.166, p = .000, ηp² = 0.144). On the contrary, the introverted participants with positive induced emotion making utilitarian decisions did not vary significantly between the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.400) and the personal dilemma (M = 7.200) conditions (F(1,96) = 0.191, p = .663, ηp² = 0.002). Yet, the introverted participants with negative induced emotion made fewer utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.120) than in the personal dilemma (M = 8.640) condition (F (1,96) = 11.032, p = .001, ηp² = 0.103). More specifically, the introverted participants with the positive emotion (M = 7.200) was significantly fewer than that with negative emotion (M = 8.640) in the personal dilemma condition (F(1,96) = 5.607, p = .020, ηp² = 0.055). Second, we conducted a mixed-model ANOVA in deontological decisions. This analysis revealed a significant effect for “Dilemma Type” (F(1,96) = 46.480, p = .000, ηp² = 0.326): overall, participants less often made deontological decisions in impersonal dilemmas (M impersonal = 9.740, SD = 0.181) than in personal dilemmas (M personal = 11.300,
trovert = 9.910, SD = 1.764). The result of this analysis also revealed the main effect of “Emotional Valence” (F(1,96) = 4.370, p = .039, ηp²
= 0.044): overall, the participants with negative emotion (M negative = 9.180, SD = 1.758) made less deontological decisions than the participants with positive emotion (M positive = 9.860, SD = 1.690). The result revealed a significant interaction between the “Personality Trait” and “Dilemma” Type (F(1,96) = 28.427, p = .000, ηp² = 0.228), post-hoc tests comfirmed that extroverted participants making deontological moral decesions was significantly fewer in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 5.740) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 14.520). In this case, significantly less introverted participants made deontological moral decisions during the impersonal dilemmas (M = 5.740) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.080). However, there was no interaction between personality traits and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 0.095, p = .759, ηp² = 0.001). Again considering each emotional valence separately, there was no interaction between dilemma type and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 3.056, p = .084, ηp² = 0.031). However, there was a significant interaction between personality traits, dilemma type and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 4.041, p = .047, ηp² = 0.040). Pairwise comparisons indicated that extroverted participants with positive induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 10.160) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.880) (F(1,96) = 35.236, p = .000, ηp² = 0.269). Similarly, the extroverted participants with negative induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.320) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.160) (F(1,96) = 38.512, p = .000, ηp² = 0.286). Introverted participants with positive induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.600) than in the personal dilemma (M = 10.880) (F(1,96) = 6.876, p = .001, ηp² = 0.067). However, introverted participants with negative induced emotion who made deontological decisions did not vary significant between the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.800) and the personal dilemmas (M = 9.360) condition (F(1,96) = 1.291, p = .259, ηp² = 0.013). More specifically, the introverted participants with the positive emotion (M = 10.880) was significantly higher than that with negative emotion (M = 9.360) in the personal dilemma condition (F (1,96) = 5.607, p = .020, ηp² = 0.055) (Fig. 2). 4. Discussion In the current study, based on the feasibility of emotional induction, 4
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Fig. 2. The effect of personality traits, emotional valence and dilemma types in moral decisions. Error bar reflects standard errors of the mean. Note. * p<.050. ** p<.010. *** p<.001.
decision. The result showed that introverted participants made more utilitarian decisions, while the extroverted participants made more deontological decisions. Furthermore, the impulsive personality traits (i.e., similar to the extravert participants) could not predict the utilitarian behavioural decisions (Franken & Muris, 2005; Karandikar, Kapoor, Fernandes & Jonason, 2019). The introverted group, in the context of personal dilemmas, maintain practical judgment and are not easily affected by the induction of negative emotion. In contrast, the extrovert group is more susceptible to emotional induction and more sensitive to punishment. On the one hand, extroverts experience and create a psychological image, thoughts, and problems that are prepared to be expressed in public behavior. The mental conflict has caused him or her trouble but very little, and he or she seems to have nothing to suppress or avoid. Introverted individuals lie mainly in the realm of imagination, creating an ideal world in the mind in place of adjusting to the real world. Interestingly, in the personal dilemma, subjects with introverted personality traits remain emotionally secure in the process of making this decision. Introverted idiosyncrasies evoke more utilitarian decision-making behaviours after awakening negative emotions than positive emotions. According to Eysenck's theory (1967), introversion and extraversion are related to the excitatory processes of the nervous system. The arousal process facilitates ongoing feelings, perceptions, and activities. Those with high extroversion have a slow, weak, short duration of arousal, which makes it difficult for them to develop conditioned reflexes. People with high introversion are prone to conditioned reflexes, which occur quickly, intensely, and for a long period of time. When those with introverted personality traits instigate negative emotions, their level of arousal is significantly increased, leading them
we attempted to validate the differences between moral dilemmas and personality traits in moral decision-making. Previous studies have supported the dual-process theory of moral decision-making (i. e., the effect of dilemma-type on moral choice). Our result indicates that most people tend to make utilitarian decisions in the switch dilemma, but not in the footbridge dilemma (Amitai & Greene, 2014; Christensen, Flexas, Calabrese, Gut & Gomila, 2014; Hauser, Cushman, Young, Jin & Mikhail, 2007; Mikhail, 2008), which is consistent with the dual-process theory. Personal dilemmas are proposed to evoke a conflict between utilitarian and deontological considerations, while impersonal dilemmas do not. Individuals respond negatively to the personal dilemma because the action in this dilemma elicits a predominantly negative emotional response, leading to more deontological decisions (Dawel, O'Kearney, McKone & Palermo, 2012). In the impersonal dilemmas, the choice may involve indirect harm, eliciting a weaker emotional response than the personal dilemmas (producing intense negative emotions), leading to more utilitarian decisions. The study indicated that participants made more utilitarian decisions when experiencing negative emotion while more deontological decisions were made under positive emotion. However, the analysis are correlational and do not indicate a causal relationship between moral decision and emotional response. We found that when participants were induced with positive emotion they tend to make utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemmas relative to personal dilemmas (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006). The logicality of the utilitarian decisions in impersonal dilemmas with positive emotion is associated with heightened activation of deliberative centers aimed at cognitive control. Hence, if a utilitarian decision is made, the automatic negative reaction must be neglected (Greene et al., 2004). What is clear is that a skilled manipulation of an individual's emotions can shape their moral 5
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(2011). In defense of the personal/ impersonal distinction in moral psychology research: Cross-cultural validation of the dual process model of moral judgment. Judgment and Decision Making, 6(3), 186–195. Patil, I. (2015). Trait psychopathy and utilitarian moral judgement: The mediating role of action aversion. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 27(3), 349–366. Ping, Z., Lu, J., & Min, Z. (2012). The effect of mood on the probability judgment of future events. Journal of Psychological Science, 35(1), 100–104. Qian, M., Wu, G., Zhu, R., & Zhang, S. (2000). Development of the revised Eysenck personality questionnaire short scale for Chinese (EPQ-RSC). Acta Psychologica Sinica, 32(3), 317–323. Strohminger, N., Lewis, R. L., & Meyer, D. E. (2011). Divergent effects of different positive emotions on moral judgment. Cognition, 119(2), 295–300. Tappin, B. M., & Capraro, V. (2018). Doing good vs. avoiding bad in prosocial choice: A refined test and extension of the morality preference hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 79, 64–70. Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge University Press. Valdesolo, P., & Desteno, D. (2006). Manipulations of emotional context shape moral judgment. Psychological Science, 17(6), 476–477. Valdesolo, P., & Desteno, D. (2010). Manipulations of emotional context shape moral judgment. Psychological Science, 17(6), 476–477. Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. Zheng, X. (2004). The duration of priming effect of different emotion models by words and photos. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 36(05), 545–549.
5. Limitations Although the present study has found that participants with negative induced emotion make more utilitarian decisions, and participants with positive induced emotion make more deontological decisions, the questions remains whether the artificially induced emotions have an interaction with the emotions generated in moral decision-making and eventually contribute to the current results. Previous studies have found that when people disapprove of pushing the strong man, it can generate negative emotions and influence dilemma judgments in specific directions (Strohminger, Lewis & Meyer, 2011). Thus, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that generated emotions impacted the results in the current study. Finally, this study also experiences the common limitation to all moral dilemma research in that are scenarios are hypothetical and may not always reflect decisions made in real life (Francis et al., 2016). Although it is certainly desirable to use ecologically effective stimuli, hypothetical stimuli may still be valuable since they allow differentiation between different psychological processes and demonstrate how each process contributes to decision-making. 6. Future research Firstly, as we have mentioned in the limitations, we are still using virtual hypothetical moral dilemma situations, which may not be consistent with actual behaviour. This motivates us to develop more real moral dilemma situations, on the premise of conforming to the requirements of the experimental theory. Secondly, the personality groups with different characteristics divided in this study only enrich the relevant research between personality traits and moral decisionmaking, but do not investigate the essential differences underlying the thinking processes. In the future, new research techniques, such as fMRI, EEG, and ERP, should be used to verify whether different personality groups are neurophysiologically different in moral decisionmaking. 7. Conclusion To summarise, the present results are noteworthy because the behavioural decision-making verified the hypothesis that moral types, emotional valence, and personality traits play an essential role in moral decision-making. Furthermore, behavioural decision-making results also confirmed that when faced with personal dilemmas, introverted individuals will make more utilitarian decisions when induced with negative emotions compared with the extroverted individuals. Acknowledgements This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81871344), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20191369), and the Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province, China (18KJB190003). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Supplementary materials Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840.
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Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
The impact of the Extraversion-Introversion personality traits and emotions in a moral decision-making task Tao Yanqianga,1, Cai Yingb,1, Rana Chandnic, Zhong Yuana,
T
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a
School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China Student of Development Guidence Center, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China c Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York 10010, United States b
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Emotion Extraversion-introversion personality traits Moral decision-making
Behavioural studies have previously examined the fundamental psychological processes behind two moral dilemma types (e.g., impersonal vs. personal dilemmas) across conditions (e.g., emotion or cognition, etc.). However, it is unknown how individual personality traits influence moral decisions by inducing emotions. The goal of the present study was to examine whether different personality traits interact with different types of moral dilemmas by inducing emotions in moral decisions. 100 participants performed a moral decision-making task and data were analyzed using mixed-model ANOVA. The result revealed that when faced with personal moral dilemmas, introverted individuals will make more utilitarian decisions when experiencing induced negative emotion, supporting the hypothesis that moral types, emotional valence, and personality traits can play an essential role in moral decision-making.
1. Introduction Moral decision-making research seeks to understand how people make decisions in the face of moral dilemmas (Bartels, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Tappin & Capraro, 2018). Is a decision primarily evoked from reason, or instead by intuition? Philosophers have focused their efforts on defending each side of the debate for centuries (Kant, 2002). Traditional moral development theory stresses the role of reasoning and cognition in mature moral decision-making (Turiel, 1983), whereas recent studies attach great importance to intuition or automatic emotional processes (Green & Haidt, 2002; Helion & Ochsner, 2018). A common strategy for studying moral decision is to use sacrificial dilemma scenarios in which participants are asked to decide whether they can sacrifice the life of one person (or group of people) to save a larger group of people or not. One of the most widely used sacrificial dilemmas is the classic "trolley problem" in which a runaway trolley is headed down a bifurfacted track towards a group of five people while there is a single individual on the other track. In the "switch dilemma" of the trolley problem, participants are asked to indicate whether it is acceptable or unacceptable to change the direction of the trolley to an alternate route and sacrifice the life of a single individual. This would be acceptable from a utilitarian standpoint, as it minimizes the total possible harm (e.g., the response of killing one person to save more is
acceptable). Hence, the utilitarian perspective lies on the principle of consequences. In the "footbridge dilemma" of the trolley problem, participants happen to be standing next to a stronger man on the footbridge, overlooking the entire trolley track, and he or she must decide whether or not to save five people by pushing the stronger man onto the trolley track to stop the trolley. These dilemmas would be unacceptable according to the principle of deontology, which treats morality as a duty or a set of universal norms stipulating what is right or wrong (e.g., the response of killing a person is unacceptable, even if it saves several other people). In essence, the deontological perspective uses the principles of morality. This dichotomy has sparked great interest among social psychologists, behavioural economists, and neuroscientists in exploring the internal mechanism behind moral judgment and decision-making (Valdesolo & Desteno, 2010). Previous studies have examined the relevance of the fundamental processes of the two types of moral decision-making by calculating the proportion across groups or conditions (e.g., the probability of rescuing five other people by sacrificing one person, Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom & Cohen, 2008). However, participants often view the decision to push the strong man onto the track as being far more morally unacceptable than the decision to divert the runaway trolley (Cushman, Young & Hauser, 2006).
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Corresponding author at: 122, Ninghai Road, Nanjing 210097, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Zhong). 1 Equal contributors https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840 Received 28 March 2019; Received in revised form 7 January 2020; Accepted 13 January 2020 0191-8869/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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personality traits group (26 females and 24males, Mage = 21.56, SD = 2.01, ages range 19 to 26) and extroverted personality traits group (29 females and 21males, Mage = 21.70, SD = 1.98, ages range 19 to 28). At the present study, participants were given informed consent and signed it voluntarily. All participants were right-handed, native Chinese speakers who had no history of neurological or psychiatric disease and have never participated in other relevant experiments about this study. After the experiment, we offered participants psychological counselling for any adverse reactions caused by the emotional induction and moral dilemma decision-making and paid□20.
The critical differences between these dilemmas are well known yet challenging to identify, though one explanation underscores the impersonal nature of the switch dilemma and the personal nature of the footbridge dilemma. According to Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley and Cohen (2001), personal dilemmas require agents to directly harm one or more people to achieve a specific goal. Conversely, impersonal dilemmas involve indirectly inflicting harm from one person or a group to another. The difference in decision-making between two moral dilemma types is thought to be attributed to more robust emotional processes triggered during personal moral dilemmas than impersonal moral dilemmas. The thought of pushing another person to their death may be more emotionally salient than merely flipping a switch in spite of ultimately producing similar consequences (i.e., one person will die so that five other people will stay alive). Therefore, emotional salience is likely a key factor to moral decision-making in these dilemmas and has been argued to be fundamental to moral judgments (Moore, Lee, Clark & Conway, 2011). However, recent research suggests that moral decision-making in sacrificial dilemmas may be more closely related to a lack of concern about harming others and deficits in processing social information than to a greater capacity for deliberative reasoning (Balash & Falkenbach, 2018). In other words, moral decision-making may be affected not only by manipulations of processing styles and conditions but also by differences in information processing across individuals. Consequently, it is crucial to ask why certain individuals tend towards deontological decision-making, while others tend towards utilitarian decision-making. For example, researches have frequently shown that dark personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, Machiavellianism) are positively associated with the tendency to endorse utilitarian decisionmaking, and incidentally linked to empathy deficits (Glenn, Koleva, Iyer, Graham & Ditto, 2010; Patil, 2015). Individuals with aversive personality traits may be primarily guided by maximizing their own personal benefit, rather than maximizing the welfare of a larger group (Kahane, Everett, Earp, Farias & Savulescu, 2015). Sacrificial dilemmas may force these individuals to make moral decisions based on the view that harm to others is never acceptable and another view that it is acceptable to harm one person in order to save more lives. Although these results do not entirely reflect the moral decision-making of individuals with dark personality traits, the decision of sacrificing one life to save multiple lives is at the very least more in line with the logic that such individuals use when making decisions. As noted above, the question here is: Why do people typically say “yes” to switch the trolley, but “no” to pushing the stronger man? In this study, first, we will address and explore the role of emotion in moral decision-making by replicating previous findings based on the dual-process theory. Second, in light of individual differences in moral decision-making, we aim to explore the relationship between personality traits and moral dilemma types, which can reveal which traits are linked to more utilitarian decisions, and follow existing principles without changing the original results. Lastly, we seek to explore whether emotions can interact with different personality traits in different moral dilemmas by a moral decision-making task.
2.2. Materials 2.2.1. Eysenck personality questionnaire Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is a self-report scale questionnaire to assess personality traits (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). The number of items in the revised version in China was changed from 107 to 88 (Qian, Wu, Zhu & Zhang, 2000), including four subscales: internal and external propensity scale (E), neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P), and validity scale (L). The reliability of E, N, and L scales is between 0.74 and 0.78. However, the P scale reliability is between 0.54 and 0.60, suggesting that EP makes RSC inherit not only the advantage of the original questionnaire with high reliability of E, N and L scale, but it also retains the disadvantage of an unstable P scale. In this study, the internal consistency for the full scale in the current sample is α = 0.81. 2.2.2. Emotional evaluation The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Huang, Yang & Li, 2003; Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988), a 20-item self-report measure of participants' current mood based on different feelings and emotions, includes items rated on a 5-point Likert-scale (1 = very sightly or not at all, 5 = very extremely). It is composed of two dimensions: positive affect (PA: e.g., “excited,” “proud”) and negative affect (NA: e.g., “distressed,” “ashamed”). Considering the cultural difference, we deleted the item “alert” at the positive dimension. The internal consistency with Cronbach's α value for the current study is, α=0.87 (PANAS-Total); α=0.74 (PA); α=0.80 (NA), respectively. 2.2.3. Mood induction Thirty-two students from a university in Harbin (the students were not allowed to participate in the final experiment) were randomly divided into two groups of 16 people each (i.e., group one and group two). The ratio of male to female in the two groups was 1:1. Based on expert evaluation and previous research (Ping, Lu & Min, 2012), we selected four videos, two for the positive emotion group and two for negative. Group one watched the positive emotion clips first and then the negative videos, while group two watched negative video clips before positive. It has been previously indicated that the pleasant mood evoked by positive video would last roughly 8 min, and the negative mood evoked by the negative video would last 2–4 min (Zheng, 2004). To avoid the interference, there was a 10 min delay between presentations of each video clip. The procedure of mood induction is shown in Fig. 1 (Part A). The positive videos are "The Story of McDull" (5 min. and 25 s) and "Unlucky Gopher" (3 min. and 22 s), and the negative videos are "Tangshan Earthquake" (7 min. and 22 s) and "1942″ (5 min. and 36 s). The results indicate that "The Story of McDull" has a significant difference on the PA dimension (t(16) = −2.331, p <0.05, Cohen's d = 0.58, β = 0.59) and the "Tangshan Earthquake" had a significant difference in the NA dimension (t(16) = −3.757, p <0.05, Cohen's d = 0.89, β = 0.91). Preliminary analysis led us to choose "The Story of McDull" to evoke positive emotion and “Tangshan Earthquake" to evoke negative emotion.
2. Method 2.1. Participants In this research, we distributed 484 Eysenck Personality questionnaires. After eliminating the invalid questionnaires, we reserved 471 questionnaires. The statistical calculation of the raw scores of the data, the number of people with a neurotic (N) level of the middle (5 ≤ N ≤ 8) is 210, and with the internal/external (E) scores less than the median (< 5) is 68, and with E scores higher than the median (> 8) is 82. Given this, 100 participants met the experimental requirements and divided into two groups of 50 each randomly. This included an introverted 2
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Fig. 1. The procedure of the experiment.
the participants in the experiment are shown in Table 1. For both the extroverted and introverted trait group, there was no significant difference in Age, EPQ-E, EPQ-N, and Gender between the positive and negative emotion group.
2.2.4. Moral judgment A battery of 60 moral dilemmas was adapted and translated from Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley and Cohen (2004). In light of cultural differences, expert consultation and back-translation were sought from three psychology teachers and four English major students, respectively. Ultimately, we excluded 5 dilemmas and used 55 hypothetical dilemmas (20 non-morals, 18 personal moral dilemmas, and 17 impersonal dilemmas). In the moral decision-making task, participants are required to read a series of moral dilemma scenarios. After reading each dilemma, they were asked whether the described action would be acceptable or unacceptable with a “Yes” or “No” response for each dilemma. There are no time limits for the response. The answer “Yes” represents utilitarian choise and “No” represents the deontological choice. The moral decision-making task was conducted via E-Prime2.0 to quantify the number of utilitarian and deontological decisions.
3.2. Emotional effects As depicted in Table 2, the results show that there are significant differences between the positive emotion group and negative emotion group within the extroverted and introverted groups. The above results indicated that the video material we used to induce emotions has the desired effect. 3.3. Utilitarian and deontological moral decision making First, we examined whether there is an interaction between different personality traits and different types of moral dilemmas by inducing emotions in utilitarian moral decision. We conducted a 2 (Personality Traits: Extraverted Group versus Introverted Group) x 2 (Emotional Valence: Positive Emotion versus Negative Emotion) x 2 (Moral Dilemma: Impersonal versus Personal) mixed-model ANOVA with the first and second-factor between-subjects and the third-factor within-subjects. Consistent with our predictions, this analysis revealed a significant main effect of the factor “Dilemma Type” (F (1,96) = 5.989, p = .016, ηp² = 0.059): overall, participants more often made utilitarian decisions in impersonal dilemmas (M impersonal = 7.260, SD = 1.813) than in personal dilemmas (M personal = 6.700, SD = 2.513). There was a main effect of the factor “Personality Traits’’
2.2.5. Procedure The participants completed the emotional self-assessment once prior to the experiment and once after viewing specific videos for arousing a corresponding emotion. The sequence of scenarios for the moral decision-making procedure is shown in Fig. 1(Part B). 3. Result 3.1. Demographic characteristics The results of demographic characteristics and personality traits of Table 1. Demographic homogeneity test. Variables
Personality traits
Positive Group (n = 25)
Negative Group (n = 25)
t/χ2
df
Age
Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group Extroverted Group Introverted Group
21.72 ± 2.05 21.80 ± 2.10 13.96 ± 3.09 4.28 ± 1.06 6.16 ± 0.94 5.88 ± 0.83 13/12 9/16
21.40 ± 2.00 21.72 ± 2.01 12.44 ± 2.57 4.52 ± 1.42 6.16 ± 1.11 6.04 ± 0.79 11/14 12/13
−0.558(t) .138(t) −1.892(t) −0.678(t) .000(t) −0.697(t) .165(χ2) .571(χ2)
48 48 48 48 48 48 1 1
EPQ-E EPQ-N Gender (M/F)
3
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Table 2. Descriptive statistics and tests of emotionally induced effects. Group Extraversion Group
Positive Group
Negative Group
Introversion Group
Positive Group
Negative Group
PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos PA-Pre PA-Pos NA-Pre NA-Pos
M ± SD
t
df
Cohen's d
β
14.20 ± 3.25 22.60 ± 6.16 12.92 ± 4.01 10.92 ± 1.68 23.64 ± 7.60 17.84 ± 4.36 11.72 ± 2.94 19.96 ± 7.50 12.68 ± 3.12 19.28 ± 4.01 12.48 ± 1.69 10.76 ± 0.88 18.40 ± 8.84 15.04 ± 4.64 12.68 ± 3.62 21.56 ± 6.99
−9.333***
24
1.865
1.000
3.517**
24
.703
.998
4.736***
24
.923
1.000
−7.142***
24
1.427
1.000
−6.218***
24
1.242
1.000
5.785***
24
1.154
1.000
5.360***
24
.564
.772
−8.407***
24
1.640
1.000
** p<.010; *** p<.001.
SD = 0.215). There was a main effect of the factor “Personality Traits” (F(1,96) = 14.067, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128): overall, the extroverted participants made more deontological decisions (M extrovert = 11.130, SD = 2.639) compared to the introverted participants (M in-
(F(1,96) = 14.067, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128): overall, the extroverted participants made fewer utilitarian decisions (M extrovert = 6.370, SD = 1.860) compared to the introverted participants (M introvert = 7.590, SD = 1.402). The result of this analysis also revealed the main effect of “Emotional Valence” (F(1,96) = 4.370, p = .039, ηp²
= 0.044): overall, the participants with negative emotion (M negative = 7.320, SD = 1.758) made more utilitarian decisions than the participants with positive emotion (M positive = 6.640, SD = 1.690). The result revealed a significant interaction between the “Personality Traits” and “Dilemma Type” (F(1,96) = 28.427, p = .000, ηp² = 0.228), post-hoc tests comfirmed that extroverted participants making utilitarian decision was significantly higher in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 7.260) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 5.480). On the other hand, introverted participants making utilitarian decisions was significantly fewer in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 7.260) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 7.920). However, there was no interaction between the personality traits and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 0.095, p = .759, ηp² = 0.001). Considering each emotional valence separately, there was no interaction between dilemma type and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 3.056, p = .084, ηp² = 0.031). However, we calculated a significant interaction between the personality traits, dilemma type and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 4.041, p = .047, ηp² = 0.040). Pairwise comparisons indicated that the extroverted participants with positive induced emotion made more utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 6.840) than in the personal dilemma (M = 5.120) condition (F(1,96) = 14.126, p = .000, ηp² = 0.128). Similarly, the extroverted participants with negative induced emotion made more utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.680) than in the personal dilemma (M = 5.840) condition (F(1,96) = 16.166, p = .000, ηp² = 0.144). On the contrary, the introverted participants with positive induced emotion making utilitarian decisions did not vary significantly between the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.400) and the personal dilemma (M = 7.200) conditions (F(1,96) = 0.191, p = .663, ηp² = 0.002). Yet, the introverted participants with negative induced emotion made fewer utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemma (M = 7.120) than in the personal dilemma (M = 8.640) condition (F (1,96) = 11.032, p = .001, ηp² = 0.103). More specifically, the introverted participants with the positive emotion (M = 7.200) was significantly fewer than that with negative emotion (M = 8.640) in the personal dilemma condition (F(1,96) = 5.607, p = .020, ηp² = 0.055). Second, we conducted a mixed-model ANOVA in deontological decisions. This analysis revealed a significant effect for “Dilemma Type” (F(1,96) = 46.480, p = .000, ηp² = 0.326): overall, participants less often made deontological decisions in impersonal dilemmas (M impersonal = 9.740, SD = 0.181) than in personal dilemmas (M personal = 11.300,
trovert = 9.910, SD = 1.764). The result of this analysis also revealed the main effect of “Emotional Valence” (F(1,96) = 4.370, p = .039, ηp²
= 0.044): overall, the participants with negative emotion (M negative = 9.180, SD = 1.758) made less deontological decisions than the participants with positive emotion (M positive = 9.860, SD = 1.690). The result revealed a significant interaction between the “Personality Trait” and “Dilemma” Type (F(1,96) = 28.427, p = .000, ηp² = 0.228), post-hoc tests comfirmed that extroverted participants making deontological moral decesions was significantly fewer in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 5.740) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 14.520). In this case, significantly less introverted participants made deontological moral decisions during the impersonal dilemmas (M = 5.740) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.080). However, there was no interaction between personality traits and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 0.095, p = .759, ηp² = 0.001). Again considering each emotional valence separately, there was no interaction between dilemma type and emotional valence (F (1,96) = 3.056, p = .084, ηp² = 0.031). However, there was a significant interaction between personality traits, dilemma type and emotional valence (F(1,96) = 4.041, p = .047, ηp² = 0.040). Pairwise comparisons indicated that extroverted participants with positive induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 10.160) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.880) (F(1,96) = 35.236, p = .000, ηp² = 0.269). Similarly, the extroverted participants with negative induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.320) than in the personal dilemmas (M = 12.160) (F(1,96) = 38.512, p = .000, ηp² = 0.286). Introverted participants with positive induced emotion made fewer deontological decisions in the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.600) than in the personal dilemma (M = 10.880) (F(1,96) = 6.876, p = .001, ηp² = 0.067). However, introverted participants with negative induced emotion who made deontological decisions did not vary significant between the impersonal dilemmas (M = 9.800) and the personal dilemmas (M = 9.360) condition (F(1,96) = 1.291, p = .259, ηp² = 0.013). More specifically, the introverted participants with the positive emotion (M = 10.880) was significantly higher than that with negative emotion (M = 9.360) in the personal dilemma condition (F (1,96) = 5.607, p = .020, ηp² = 0.055) (Fig. 2). 4. Discussion In the current study, based on the feasibility of emotional induction, 4
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Fig. 2. The effect of personality traits, emotional valence and dilemma types in moral decisions. Error bar reflects standard errors of the mean. Note. * p<.050. ** p<.010. *** p<.001.
decision. The result showed that introverted participants made more utilitarian decisions, while the extroverted participants made more deontological decisions. Furthermore, the impulsive personality traits (i.e., similar to the extravert participants) could not predict the utilitarian behavioural decisions (Franken & Muris, 2005; Karandikar, Kapoor, Fernandes & Jonason, 2019). The introverted group, in the context of personal dilemmas, maintain practical judgment and are not easily affected by the induction of negative emotion. In contrast, the extrovert group is more susceptible to emotional induction and more sensitive to punishment. On the one hand, extroverts experience and create a psychological image, thoughts, and problems that are prepared to be expressed in public behavior. The mental conflict has caused him or her trouble but very little, and he or she seems to have nothing to suppress or avoid. Introverted individuals lie mainly in the realm of imagination, creating an ideal world in the mind in place of adjusting to the real world. Interestingly, in the personal dilemma, subjects with introverted personality traits remain emotionally secure in the process of making this decision. Introverted idiosyncrasies evoke more utilitarian decision-making behaviours after awakening negative emotions than positive emotions. According to Eysenck's theory (1967), introversion and extraversion are related to the excitatory processes of the nervous system. The arousal process facilitates ongoing feelings, perceptions, and activities. Those with high extroversion have a slow, weak, short duration of arousal, which makes it difficult for them to develop conditioned reflexes. People with high introversion are prone to conditioned reflexes, which occur quickly, intensely, and for a long period of time. When those with introverted personality traits instigate negative emotions, their level of arousal is significantly increased, leading them
we attempted to validate the differences between moral dilemmas and personality traits in moral decision-making. Previous studies have supported the dual-process theory of moral decision-making (i. e., the effect of dilemma-type on moral choice). Our result indicates that most people tend to make utilitarian decisions in the switch dilemma, but not in the footbridge dilemma (Amitai & Greene, 2014; Christensen, Flexas, Calabrese, Gut & Gomila, 2014; Hauser, Cushman, Young, Jin & Mikhail, 2007; Mikhail, 2008), which is consistent with the dual-process theory. Personal dilemmas are proposed to evoke a conflict between utilitarian and deontological considerations, while impersonal dilemmas do not. Individuals respond negatively to the personal dilemma because the action in this dilemma elicits a predominantly negative emotional response, leading to more deontological decisions (Dawel, O'Kearney, McKone & Palermo, 2012). In the impersonal dilemmas, the choice may involve indirect harm, eliciting a weaker emotional response than the personal dilemmas (producing intense negative emotions), leading to more utilitarian decisions. The study indicated that participants made more utilitarian decisions when experiencing negative emotion while more deontological decisions were made under positive emotion. However, the analysis are correlational and do not indicate a causal relationship between moral decision and emotional response. We found that when participants were induced with positive emotion they tend to make utilitarian decisions in the impersonal dilemmas relative to personal dilemmas (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006). The logicality of the utilitarian decisions in impersonal dilemmas with positive emotion is associated with heightened activation of deliberative centers aimed at cognitive control. Hence, if a utilitarian decision is made, the automatic negative reaction must be neglected (Greene et al., 2004). What is clear is that a skilled manipulation of an individual's emotions can shape their moral 5
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Reference
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5. Limitations Although the present study has found that participants with negative induced emotion make more utilitarian decisions, and participants with positive induced emotion make more deontological decisions, the questions remains whether the artificially induced emotions have an interaction with the emotions generated in moral decision-making and eventually contribute to the current results. Previous studies have found that when people disapprove of pushing the strong man, it can generate negative emotions and influence dilemma judgments in specific directions (Strohminger, Lewis & Meyer, 2011). Thus, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that generated emotions impacted the results in the current study. Finally, this study also experiences the common limitation to all moral dilemma research in that are scenarios are hypothetical and may not always reflect decisions made in real life (Francis et al., 2016). Although it is certainly desirable to use ecologically effective stimuli, hypothetical stimuli may still be valuable since they allow differentiation between different psychological processes and demonstrate how each process contributes to decision-making. 6. Future research Firstly, as we have mentioned in the limitations, we are still using virtual hypothetical moral dilemma situations, which may not be consistent with actual behaviour. This motivates us to develop more real moral dilemma situations, on the premise of conforming to the requirements of the experimental theory. Secondly, the personality groups with different characteristics divided in this study only enrich the relevant research between personality traits and moral decisionmaking, but do not investigate the essential differences underlying the thinking processes. In the future, new research techniques, such as fMRI, EEG, and ERP, should be used to verify whether different personality groups are neurophysiologically different in moral decisionmaking. 7. Conclusion To summarise, the present results are noteworthy because the behavioural decision-making verified the hypothesis that moral types, emotional valence, and personality traits play an essential role in moral decision-making. Furthermore, behavioural decision-making results also confirmed that when faced with personal dilemmas, introverted individuals will make more utilitarian decisions when induced with negative emotions compared with the extroverted individuals. Acknowledgements This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81871344), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20191369), and the Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province, China (18KJB190003). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Supplementary materials Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840.
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