ArticlePloS one2016
Intuition and Moral Decision-Making - The Effect of Time Pressure and Cognitive Load on Moral Judgment and Altruistic Behavior.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effect of cognitive load, ego depletion, induction and time restriction on moral judgments about sacrificial dilemmas: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Pooled it
- Association of natural sleep with moral utilitarianism: No evidence from 6 preregistered studies.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- Acute effects of alcohol on social and personal decision making.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Article
- Intuitive and deliberative processes underlying commitment signaling for cooperative assortment.iScience · 2026Article
- Free will and trolley dilemmas: evidence for moral inertia in a Venezuelan sample.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Untested Assumptions and Tenuous Evidence: A Critique of the Dual-Process Account of Moral Judgment.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Exploring individual differences in the impact of cognitive constraints on prosocial decision-making via intrinsic brain connectivity.Brain imaging and behavior · 2025Article
- Assessing moral competence in medical and psychology students: effects on anxiety and test duration in online versus paper-based testing.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Heterogeneity in Responding to Clinical Vignettes Depicting Sepsis Suggests That Non-Medical Data May Drive the Decision-Making Process.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Does Cognitive Load Influence Moral Judgments? The Role of Action-Omission and Collective Interests.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
- Moral judgement under induced anxiety: threat-of-shock reduces sensitivity to immoral acts and alters neural processing.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Effect of Clinical Ambiguity on the Decision-Making Process Among Intensive Care Unit Providers in Northern America Using Clinical Vignettes in Mixed Methods Study.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2025Article
- The Dual Process model: the effect of cognitive load on the ascription of intentionality.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- When You Think of and Identify Yourself as a Nurse, You Will Become More Deontological and Less Utilitarian.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Pulling the lever in a hurry: the influence of impulsivity and sensitivity to reward on moral decision-making under time pressure.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- The effect of fast and slow decision-making on equity-efficiency tradeoffs and moral repugnance.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Thinking About Reasons for One's Choices Increases Sensitivity to Moral Norms in Moral-Dilemma Judgments.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Do individuals intuitively favor certain moral actions over others? This study explores the role of intuitive thinking-induced by time pressure and cognitive load-in moral judgment and behavior. We conduct experiments in three different countries (Sweden, Austria, and the United States) involving over 1,400 subjects. All subjects responded to four trolley type dilemmas and four dictator games involving different charitable causes. Decisions were made under time pressure/time delay or while experiencing cognitive load or control. Overall we find converging evidence that intuitive states do not influence moral decisions. Neither time-pressure nor cognitive load had any effect on moral judgments or altruistic behavior. Thus we find no supporting evidence for the claim that intuitive moral judgments and dictator game giving differ from more reflectively taken decisions. Across all samples and decision tasks men were more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments and act selfishly compared to women, providing further evidence that there are robust gender differences in moral decision-making. However, there were no significant interactions between gender and the treatment manipulations of intuitive versus reflective decision-making.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.