Visual Versus Verbal Thinking and Dual‑Process Moral Cognition

From Dual-Process Theories of the Social Mind. Edited by Jeffrey W. Sherman, Bertram Gawronski, and Yaacov Trope. Copyright 2014 by The Guilford Press. All rights reserved. CAH PTER 23 V isual versus Verbal Thinking and Dual-Process Moral Cognition Elinor Amit, Sara Gottlieb, and Joshua D. Greene Moral judgments are not produced by a respective influences of visual and verbal unified “moral faculty.” Instead, they are thinking on moral judgment. influenced by a combination of automatic First, we briefly review the most relevant emotional responses and controlled cogni- literature on automatic versus controlled tive processes with distinctive cognitive pro- processes in moral judgment and decision files (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006; making. Next, we discuss the distinctive Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & features of visual versus verbal processing, Cohen, 2008; Moore, Clark, & Kane, 2008; then present a set of related hypotheses con- Paxton, Ungar, & Greene, 2011) and neural cerning the respective influences of visual substrates (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, and verbal thinking on moral judgment, fol- Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Greene, Nystrom, lowed by evidence indicating a special con- Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Mendez, nection between visual imagery and deon- Anderson, & Shapira, 2005; Koenigs et tological moral judgment. We also consider al., 2007; Ciaramelli, Muccioli, Ladavas, a possible relationship between visual and & Di Pellegrino, 2007). This dual- process verbal cognition on the one hand, and the framework (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977; Slo- primary and secondary emotion distinction man, 1996; Loewenstein, 1996; Chaiken & on the other. Finally, we conclude with some Trope, 1999; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999; speculative thoughts concerning the rela- Lieberman, Gaunt, Gilbert, & Trope, 2002; tionships among the various cognitive dis- Stanovich & West, 2000; Kahneman, 2003, tinctions discussed in this chapter. 2011) answers some questions while raising many others, including the following: What triggers the automatic emotional responses MORAL DiLEMMAS AND DUAL- that influence our moral judgments? What PROCESS MORAL COGNITION accounts for the variability in these “gut reactions,” both from person to person and We and others have used moral dilemmas situation to situation? Parallel questions in experiments aimed at breaking moral arise concerning the influence of controlled judgment down into component processes. cognition on moral judgment. In this chap- (Early examples include Greene et al., 2001, ter, we address these questions, focusing on 2004, 2008; Mendez et al., 2005; Koenigs the role of domain- general cognitive pro- et al., 2007; Ciaramelli et al., 2007; Cush- cesses. More specifically, we consider the man et al., 2006. Earlier work examined 340 Visual versus Verbal Thinking and Dual-Process Moral Cognition 341 moral dilemmas, but without a dual- process are emotional, as in, for example, early framework: Petrinovich, O’Neill, & Jor- visual processing. gensen, 1993, Mikhail, 2000). This is a use- The distinction between automatic and ful strategy given that moral dilemmas tend controlled processes is familiar enough, but to erupt at the fault lines between competing it is used by different researchers to contrast cognitive processes (Cushman & Greene, different clusters of characteristics. Along 2012). On a philosophical level, these dilem- with the core automatic– controlled distinc- mas capture the pervasive tension between tion, researchers often distinguish between the rights of the individual and the greater processes that are fast versus slow, uncon- good (Greene, 2007; Paxton, Bruni, & scious versus conscious, implicit versus Greene, 2013). On a cognitive level, they explicit, effortless versus effortful, intuitive reveal the dual- process structure of moral versus reflective, more emotional versus less cognition. For example, in the classic foot- emotional, and those that require minimal bridge dilemma (Thomson, 1985), one can versus substantial use of central cognitive save five lives by pushing an innocent per- resources (Evans, 2008; Kahneman, 2003). son into the path of a runaway trolley. Here, In the context of moral judgment, we believe deontological judgments favoring the rights that all of these distinctions apply, but of the individual (“It’s wrong to push the with some caveats. In our view— indeed, man, even if it saves more lives”) are pref- in any sensible view of moral psychology— erentially supported by automatic emotional automatic and controlled processes interact, responses (Greene et al., 2001; Mendez et which makes teasing apart their respective al., 2005; Koenigs et al., 2007; Ciaramelli et contributions challenging. Controlled, con- al., 2007), while utilitarian (or consequen- scious, reflective processes may bring to tialist) judgments favoring the greater good light new information (e.g., through explicit (“Better to push and save more lives”) are reasoning) or highlight old information preferentially supported by controlled cogni- (e.g., through heightened attention or will- tive processes (Greene et al., 2004, 2008). ful acts of imagination). These private men- Before moving on, we wish to clarify our tal acts may then trigger automatic emo- use of the potentially misleading word cog- tional responses. For example, one might nitive. It sometimes refers to a class of psy- respond to an imagined scene much as one chological processes to be contrasted with would respond to the scene itself. But in the more emotional or affective processes, as case of the imagined scene the response is in the journal Social Cognitive and Affec- triggered automatically by an endogenous tive Neuroscience. At other times, cognitive controlled cognitive process rather than by refers more broadly to psychological pro- an external stimulus. (See Cushman, Gray, cess that may be characterized in terms of Gaffey, & Mendes, 2012, described below.) information processing (i.e., all psychologi- Having had such a response, one might cal processes), as in the journal Trends in become consciously aware of the response, Cognitive Sciences, which covers research if not the complete chain of cognitive events in all areas of psychology including emo- that triggered it. One might reflect on that tion/affect. Emotions are “cognitive” in the response, deliberate about it, and ultimately second sense but not the first. Here we avoid override its action tendency. Thus, when it the more narrow use of cognitive, which we comes to complex judgments and decisions, regard as a relic from a time when psycholo- it may be rare for a behavioral response to be gists failed to appreciate the information- purely automatic, and it may be impossible processing nature of emotions. When we for a behavioral response to be purely con- wish to distinguish automatic emotional trolled: Controlled cognitive processes must responses from the more controlled pro- have something more automatic on which to cesses on the opposite side of our dual- operate (Miller & Cohen, 2001). Neverthe- process framework, we refer to the latter as less, it may be possible to identify distinc- controlled processes or controlled cognitive tive influences of automatic and controlled processes, with no implication that emo- processes on moral judgment, as we explain tions are not “cognitive” in the broader, below. information- processing sense. Likewise, we Initial evidence for our dual- process the- recognize that not all automatic processes ory of moral judgment came from functional 342 THINKING AND REASONING magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) stud- exhibit increased activity when people make ies demonstrating the engagement of brain utilitarian judgments (Greene et al., 2004). regions associated with emotion and social More recent behavioral studies implicate cognition in response to “personal” dilem- controlled cognition by showing that cogni- mas such as the footbridge case (Greene tive load selectively interferes with utilitarian et al., 2001, 2004; Schaich Borg, Hynes, judgment (Greene et al., 2008, Trémolière, Van Horn, Grafton, & Sinnott- Armstrong, Neys, & Bonnefon, 2012), that utilitarian 2006). These regions include the ventro- judgment increases with deliberation time medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the (Suter & Hertwig, 2011), and that utilitar- amygdala. A study of patients with fronto- ian judgment can be increased by inducing temporal dementia (FTD), which produces a more reflective mindset (Paxton et al., “emotional blunting,” provided more direct 2011). Other correlational studies associate causal evidence for the connection between utilitarian judgment with increased “need emotional responses and deontological judg- for cognition” (Bartels, 2008) and (for some ment (Mendez et al., 2005). Here, patients instances of utilitarian judgment) work- with FTD, relative to control subjects/ ing memory capacity (Moore et al., 2008). patients, were three times more likely to Some have argued that utilitarian judgments favor pushing the man off the footbridge in in response to moral dilemmas reflect an the name of the greater good. Subsequent absence of concern about doing harm rather studies examining patients with vmPFC than a moral concern for the greater good. damage underscored this point, showing Most notably, Bartels and Pizzaro (2011) that patients with such emotion- related found that utilitarian judgments are posi- damage make more utilitarian judgments tively related to various antisocial person- (Koenigs et al., 2007; Ciaramelli

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