Individual Moral Judgment In Life Course

Individuals have different preference when it comes to moral dilemmas.Typical moral dilemma is “Trolley Problem”.People may have bipolar choices,deontologist or consequentialist.According to the extent of emotion enrollment,moral dilemmas can be divided into personal dilemmas and impersonal dilemmas.Personal dilemmas contain high-conflict dilemmas and low-conflict dilemmas.The dual process model proposed by Greene concludes that intuitive response can lead to deontologist,while controlled cognitive process can result in consequentialist.However,there is seldom research about moral judgment in life course.So,the present study aims to explore age effects on moral judgment and study the factors of moral judgment based on the dual process model.Study 1 recruited 80 young adults and 41 old adults,assigned them randomly into conditions(with/without cognitive load)to make moral judgment.The purpose was to study the influence on moral judgment between two age groups.Study 2 recruited 75 young adults and 37 old adults.They were under different time pressure conditions to make choices,which aimed to explore whether time pressure can influence moral judgment of different age groups.Overall,the results showed that,compared to young adults,old people were more likely to make deontologist judgment.Under cognitive load,individuals cost more time to make decisions,especially when old adults made consequentialist.Cognitive load did influence the rate of utilitarian in low-condition dilemmas.With time pressure,individuals were prone to consequentialist in impersonal dilemmas.According to the results,it concluded that cognitive load can selectively influence moral judgment.But cognitive load and time pressure didn't alter the percentage of moral judgment in highcognitive personal dilemmas.The possible explanation was that moral rules may form in early process,and not changed in the current contexts.