Moral dilemmas in cognitive neuroscience of moral decision-making: A principled review

Moral dilemma tasks have been a much appreciated experimental paradigm in empirical studies on moral cognition for decades and have, more recently, also become a preferred paradigm in the field of cognitive neuroscience of moral decision-making. Yet, studies using moral dilemmas suffer from two main shortcomings: they lack methodological homogeneity which impedes reliable comparisons of results across studies, thus making a metaanalysis manifestly impossible; and second, they overlook control of relevant design parameters. In this paper, we review from a principled standpoint the studies that use moral dilemmas to approach the psychology of moral judgment and its neural underpinnings. We present a systematic review of 19 experimental design parameters that can be identified in moral dilemmas. Accordingly, our analysis establishes a methodological basis for the required homogeneity between studies and suggests the consideration of experimental aspects that have not yet received much attention despite their relevance.

► Studies using moral dilemmas show a substantial methodological heterogeneity.
► Many studies fail to control for key parameters in moral dilemma design.
► Moral dilemmas comprise 19 parameters that can be experimentally controlled.
► Variations in dilemma design parameters elicit distinct moral judgments.