Since the two landmark publications in moral psychology (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001), the field has experienced an affective revolution that has put emotions at the center of the stage. Although work on exploring role of emotions in assessing morality of various types of moral acts (impure, unfair, etc.; Haidt, 2007) abounds, studying its role in harmful behaviors presents a unique challenge. The aversion to harming others is an integral part of the foundations of human moral sense and it presents itself in the form of deeply ingrained moral intuitions (Haidt, 2007). Since creating laboratory situations to investigate harm aversion raises ethical issues, research has primarily relied on studying hypothetical cases. In the current thesis, we utilize hypothetical vignettes to explore role of emotions in both moral judgment and behavior in harmful contexts, both when harm is carried out intentionally or produced accidentally.
Study 1 investigates the role of emotion in motivating utilitarian behavior in moral dilemmas when presented in contextually salient virtual reality format as compared to judgment about the same cases for their textual versions.
Study 2 investigates divergent contributions of two different sources of affect, one stemming from self-focused distress and the other focused on other-oriented concern, on utilitarian moral judgments in autistics.
Study 3 investigates the role of empathic arousal in condemning agents involved in unintentional harms and why harmful outcomes have a greater bearing on blame as compared to acceptability judgments.
