Errors in Moral Forecasting: The Importance of Affect for the Relationship Between Moral Behaviours and Moral Forecasts
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In recent years, the field of moral psychology has been heavily dominated by studies on moral judgment that have relied on hypothetical moral dilemmas. But how do individuals' responses to such dilemmas map on to real-life moral behaviour? The aim of this dissertation was to explore this association, as well as to explore the role that affective experience plays in the relationship between peoples' actual and forecasted moral behaviours. The results of five experiments suggest that people might act more morally than they would predict and that affective experience plays in important role in motivating moral behaviours, as well as accurate forecasts. In Studies 1 and 2, participants acted more morally than they predicted they would in a series of moral dilemmas including a one-shot Dictator Game (Study 1), as well as in a math task where they had the chance to cheat on a math test through either commission or omission (Study 2). In Study 3, participants who actually had the chance to cheat on this same math task displayed significantly more autonomic nervous system arousal than participants forecasting their behaviour in this same dilemma. Critically, the moral underestimation effect in this study was mediated by autonomic arousal. In Study 4, I found that inducing affective salience by providing false somatic feedback indicative of arousal increased forecasting accuracy among participants for the same math task dilemma. Finally, in Study 5, I found that individual differences in emotional awareness moderate moral forecasting accuracy in this same moral dilemma, such that individuals low in emotional awareness exhibit exacerbated forecasting errors. This research suggests that the affective arousal present during real-life moral dilemmas may not be fully engaged during moral forecasting, and that this may account for the moral forecasting errors that individuals make. Given that the majority of moral psychologists rely on hypothetical scenarios and self-report to study the nature of morality, I propose that investigating the way in which affective experience interacts with and shapes individuals' moral forecasts is an important and meaningful pursuit.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Rimma Teper
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2738330045