ArticleJournal of affective disorders2019
Effects of childhood trauma on adult moral decision-making: Clinical correlates and insights from bipolar disorder.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of adolescent clinical depression and depressive symptoms on moral thinking: based on process dissociation approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Do Adverse Childhood Experiences Make Us More Utilitarian in Moral Dilemmas?Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Article
- Effect of subclinical depression on moral judgment dilemmas: a process dissociation approach.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Individual and Environmental Correlates of Adolescents' Moral Decision-Making in Moral Dilemmas.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Developing Bipolar Disorder: Current Understanding and Ensuring Continued Progress.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2020Review
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChildhood adversity has been shown to exert profound effects on basic psychological processes well into adulthood. Some of these processes, such as those related to reward and emotion, play critical roles in moral decision-making. As a population with high rates of childhood trauma as well as heterogenous clinical presentation, individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) constitute an enriched group in which to examine the correlates of trauma and other clinical variables with moral cognition.
methods62 euthymic BD patients and 27 controls responded to moral dilemma scenarios and completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.
resultsResults revealed a main effect of diagnosis on moral decision-making only when both personal force and an intention were required, indicating a more utilitarian style in BD patients relative to controls. Several interesting patterns also emerged regardless of diagnostic status. Higher ratings of physical neglect were significantly associated with higher ratings of acceptability (a utilitarian tendency) across dilemma types, and a similar pattern was observed at the trend level for experiences of emotional neglect. Significant main effects on moral decision-making were also observed for sex, illness duration, and history of psychotic features in the BD sample. LIMITATIONS: The present study is limited by the self-reported nature of the CTQ and by the small number of trials of moral dilemmas. In addition, practical and clinical implications of the moral dilemmas paradigm are limited due to its abstract nature.
conclusionsOur results indicate that certain clinical features as well as childhood maltreatment (in particular neglect) may significantly impact moral decision making in adult life. Surprisingly, childhood trauma was associated with a more utilitarian style, which is in the opposite direction from previous effects shown in PTSD. Although speculative, our results suggest that there may be a protective quality associated with utilitarian moral decision-making tendencies.
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