Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 19, 2026
09:20
Using fMRI to Dissect Moral Judgment
Published on: April 30, 2023
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Moral judgment as reasoning by constraint satisfaction
Keith J Holyoak1, Derek Powell2
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563holyoak@lifesci.ucla.eduhttp://reasoninglab.psych.ucla.edu.
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|September 12, 2019
Summary
Moral judgments are not solely driven by emotion. Instead, emotion interacts with beliefs and values through coherence-based reasoning for decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Moral Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The role of emotion in moral judgment is a longstanding debate in psychology and philosophy.
- Empirical evidence has been interpreted to support both emotion-driven and reason-driven accounts of moral decision-making.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the interplay between emotion and reasoning in moral judgments.
- To propose a model where emotion interacts with cognitive processes to generate moral decisions.
Main Methods:
- Review and analysis of empirical evidence on moral judgment.
- Theoretical integration of emotional and cognitive factors.
Main Results:
- Evidence challenges the view that emotion is the primary driver of moral judgments.
- Emotion is demonstrated to be an integral component, interacting with other factors.
Conclusions:
- Moral judgments arise from a complex interaction between emotion and cognitive processes, including beliefs and values.
- Coherence-based reasoning, operating below conscious awareness, mediates this interaction in moral decision-making.
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