Socio-cognitive conflict, emotions and complexity of thought in real-life morality.
A new taxonomy of real-life dilemmas was tested in two studies. In Study 1, 35 respondents assessed six types of real-life dilemmas in terms of socio-cognitive conflict. Support was found for a classification of dilemmas into three levels of socio-cognitive conflict. In Study 2, 191 young women responded to measures of social perspective-taking and emotional empathy and reported a real-life moral dilemma as well as their feelings while making decisions about it. The dilemmas were classified into personal and impersonal and into three levels of socio-cognitive conflict. Dependent variables were the integrative complexity of the arguments and the reported feelings (sympathy, upset, and remorse). Dispositional empathy and perspective taking predicted level of socio-cognitive conflict and feelings of sympathy but not integrative complexity. Personal dilemmas aroused more feelings of upset than did impersonal ones. Low socio-cognitive conflict dilemmas evoked less complex thinking and less intensive feelings of upset and sympathy than did moderate and high socio-cognitive conflict dilemmas.
Myyry
Liisa
L
Department of Social Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland. liisa.myyry@helsinki.fi
Helkama
Klaus
K
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012919:Social Behavior; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*