The College Students’ Experimental Research About Dual-process Theories Of Moral Decision-making With The Deontological Inclination And The Utilitarian Inclination

From Piaget and Kohlberg who return the moral decision-making to the rational cognition area, which is namely the moral reasoning that leads to ethical decision making, to Haidt et al, who propose that the emotion and cognitive reasoning have the same important role in moral decision-making, which is the social intuition’s model of moral decisions. Until now, Greene proposed the dual-process model of moral theory, which believe that when we have a moral decision, the cognitive and emotional process have an equal competitive role. When the emotional process overcome the cognitive process, we will make the deontological judgement. And when the cognitive process overcome the emotional process, we will make the utilitarian judgement.In this paper, we did two different studies on dual-process theory of moral decisions for a further exploration.In study 1, with a form of the questionnaire, we research the relationship between the individual’s empathy which is represented by the empathic concern, fantasy, personal distress, perspective taking and the individual’s thinking styles which way of thinking is represented by the need for cognition, faith in intuition and two inclinations of moral decision-making. Finally, we found that:1. The need for cognition has a significant difference in gender;2. The index of the utilitarian inclination has a significant difference in subject classification;3. The cognitive scores has a significant difference in grade;4. Compared to the utilitarian inclination, the deontological inclination is associated with the emotional reaction which the harmful behavior cause. And the relationship between it and the empathy is strong positive; the relationship between it and the personal distress is strong negative.5. Compared to the deontological inclination, the utilitarian inclination is associated with the cognitive consideration about the behavioral outcomes and the pros and cons. And the relationship between it and the need for cognition is strong positive.In the study 2, with a form of the experiment, we designed two variables, which are the empathic concern that is associated with the deontological inclination and the need for cognition that is associated with the utilitarian inclination. We found that:1. The higher empathy, the more obvious the deontological inclination; the lower cognitive load, the more obvious the deontological inclination.2. When the individual has a cognitive load, the higher empathy, the less obvious the utilitarian inclination; on the contrary, the lower empathy, the more obvious the utilitarian inclination.