Anxiety and moral judgment: The shared deontological tendency of the behavioral inhibition system and the unique utilitarian tendency of trait anxiety

The present study investigated the effects of induced anxiety on moral judgment in both the switch and the footbridge dilemmas. Specifically, the study examined whether the predisposed trait and behavioral motivation dimensions of induced anxiety affected people's goodness rating of the utilitarian options. Participants (N = 160) were randomly assigned to either of the anxiety or the control conditions. Results showed consistency with the existing literature in that most people judged as morally good the utilitarian option in the switch dilemma but as morally bad the utilitarian option in the footbridge dilemma, no matter whether people were anxious or not. More important, results demonstrated that the BIS was negatively related to goodness rating in both dilemmas (i.e., a shared deontological tendency) and that trait anxiety was positively correlated to goodness rating specifically in the footbridge dilemma (i.e., the utilitarian tendency). The psychological implications of these findings were discussed from the perspective of risk or uncertainty perception.