USING MORAL DILEMMAS TO CHARACTERIZE SOCIAL DECISION-MAKING

Objective: Moral dilemmas are used in neuroscience research to characterize brain systems involved in utilitarian vs. deontological behavior. However, few studies have explored whether behavioral responses to these dilemmas can be used as a 'performance measure' of social decision-making skills, and whether these skills are replicable across cultures. the aims of this study were (i) to examine whether a Spanish version of the Greene's moral dilemmas questionnaire was able to dissociate distinctive 'choice patterns' and 'difficulty ratings' as a function of the type of social scenario, (ii) to determine the cultural equivalence of 'choice patterns' with respect to existing US samples, and (iii) to explore whether the moral dilemmas induce substantial changes in respondents' mood (in accordance with the somatic-maker model). Method: To achieve these aims, we developed and tested a Spanish version of the Greene's questionnaire in 154 undergraduate students. In addition to the choice' measure (taking/not taking the utilitarian action), this version incorporated two novel performance measures: 'difficulty to make the choice' and 'congruent responses to non-moral dilemmas'. We examined these measures' performance profile as a function of type of dilemma and their equivalence with US results. We also assessed Panas-indexed mood states before and after exposure to the dilemmas. Results: The results showed that both 'choice' and 'difficulty' measures discriminate responses to different types of moral scenarios. Conclusions: In sum, our study has verified that choice patterns in the Spanish population are similar to the US, hence supporting the usefulness of moral dilemmas' derived performance measures. In addition this research provide information about the bi-directional relationship between emotion and moral judgments.