The Effect Of Regulatory Focus And Decision Strategy On Moral Judgement

Previous studies have shown that deontological judgement arise from emotion reactions to the harm,but utilitarian judgement arise from reasoning about trade-offs.However,the latest studies have shown that individuals prevention motivations increase the likelihood of deontological judgement,while promotion motivations increase the likelihood of utilitarian judgement in moral dilemmas.And,the latest have also shown that when people focus on hopes and wishes(promotion)they prefer to use intuition(or heuristic method),while when people focus on duties or oughts(prevention)they prefer to use explicit reasoning in decisions and judgements.It is worth thinking about if deontological judgement were the outcome of emotion reaction,and prevention focus prefer to use reasoning and make more deontological judgement,is that means prevention focus could increase the likelihood of deontological judgement via reasoning? And vice versa,is that means promotion focus could increase the likelihood of utilitarian judgement though intuition(or heuristic method)? So in this study the regulatory focus were introduced in moral judgement and the results of 2 experiments have shown that prevention motivations indeed increase the likelihood of deontological judgement,while promotion motivations indeed increase the likelihood of utilitarian judgement in moral dilemmas,and this effect could not explained by participants' differing emotion reactions(experiments 1).Further,promotion-focused individuals are more likely to use intuition while prevention-focused participants are more likely to use reasoning,and such fit(vs.nonfit)between regulatory focus and decision strategies leads to more moral evaluations(experiments 2).At last,this outcomes occur because fit enhances “feeling right” experience(experiments 2).