ArticleFrontiers in psychology2014
Reduced empathic concern leads to utilitarian moral judgments in trait alexithymia.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Empathic Concern on Mental Health and Behavioral Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Excessive Adaptation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Beyond Trolleyology: The CNI Model of Moral-Dilemma Responses.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2025Review
- The German translation of the Oxford utilitarianism scale: Validation and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the observations.PloS one · 2025Article
- On the Relationship Between Alexithymia and Social Cognition: A Systematic Review.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2024Review
- Would you? Effects of oxytocin on moral choices in forensic psychopathic patients.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Alcohol attention bias modulates neural engagement during moral processing.Social neuroscience · 2024Article
- Understanding empathy deficits and emotion dysregulation in psychopathy: The mediating role of alexithymia.PloS one · 2024Article
- Being blind (or not) to scenarios used in sacrificial dilemmas: the influence of factual and contextual information on moral responses.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The Role of Alexithymia and Moral Disengagement in Childhood Physical Abuse and Depressive Symptoms: A Comparative Study Among Rural and Urban Chinese College Students.Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Article
- The role of emotional awareness in evaluative judgment: evidence from alexithymia.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Empathy and bystander helping behavior in cyberbullying among adolescents: the mediating role of internet moral judgment and the moderating role of internet self-efficacy.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Effects of Alexithymia on Moral Decision-Making in Sacrificial Dilemmas: High Alexithymia is Associated with Weaker Sensitivity to Moral Norms.Psychology research and behavior management · 2023Article
- Moral Decision-Making in Healthcare and Medical Professions During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Trends in psychology · 2023Article
- Effect of subclinical depression on moral judgment dilemmas: a process dissociation approach.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Complexity of the Human-Animal Bond: Empathy, Attachment and Anthropomorphism in Human-Animal Relationships and Animal Hoarding.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- Effects of Primary and Secondary Psychopathy on Deontological and Utilitarian Response Tendencies: The Mediator Role of Alexithymia.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Prosocial behavior is associated with transdiagnostic markers of affective sensitivity in multiple domains.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2022Article
- Moral injury and the COVID-19 pandemic: A philosophical viewpoint.Ethics, medicine, and public health · 2021Article
- Interoceptive Accuracy Did Not Affect Moral Decision-Making, but Affect Regret Rating for One's Moral Choices.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Individual and Environmental Correlates of Adolescents' Moral Decision-Making in Moral Dilemmas.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Recent research with moral dilemmas supports dual-process model of moral decision making. This model posits two different paths via which people can endorse utilitarian solution that requires personally harming someone in order to achieve the greater good (e.g., killing one to save five people): (i) weakened emotional aversion to the prospect of harming someone due to reduced empathic concern for the victim; (ii) enhanced cognition which supports cost-benefit analysis and countervails the prepotent emotional aversion to harm. Direct prediction of this model would be that personality traits associated with reduced empathy would show higher propensity to endorse utilitarian solutions. As per this prediction, we found that trait alexithymia, which is well-known to have deficits in empathy, was indeed associated with increased utilitarian tendencies on emotionally aversive personal moral dilemmas and this was due to reduced empathic concern for the victim. Results underscore the importance of empathy for moral judgments in harm/care domain of morality.
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