ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

›› 2011, Vol. 19 ›› Issue (11): 1702-1712.

• 研究前沿 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Dilemma of Moral Dilemmas: The Conflict between Emotion and Reasoning in Moral Judgments

YU Feng;PENG Kai-Ping;HAN Ting-Ting;CHAI Fang-Yuan;BAI Yang   

  1. (1 Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China)
    (2 Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)
    (3 School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China)
  • Received:2011-03-21 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2011-11-15 Published:2011-11-15
  • Contact: PENG Kai-Ping

Abstract: Though moral judgment ranks among one of the most essential human activities, arguments about the roles of emotion and reasoning play in moral judgment never cease. From the philosophical controversy between Hume and Kant to the debates among developmental psychologists; from social psychology arguments about the power of the situations to neuroscience insights about the brain constraints to human morality, modern psychology has witnessed the paradigm shifts from time to time concerning the importance of emotion and reasoning in moral judgments. We reviewed several competing theories on moral judgment and gave a synthetic view of the roles emotion and reasoning play in moral judgment. We suggest that the psychological contributions in understanding human morality would come from the systematical analysis of moral judgments in real life situations involving real individuals with real implications. Methodologically, multi-level and multi-method analysis is much needed. By studying the effects of situational factors in moral judgments, we may eventually be able to go beyond the dichotomy of emotion and reasoning to truly understand the mechanisms involved in human moral judgments.

Key words: morality, moral judgment, moral reasoning, emotion, dual-process model