Evaluation of the effects of COVD-19 pandemic on moral decision-making using affective rating

Abstract

The measures taken by the public authorities to reduce the spread COVID-19 virus during the pandemics put the population under challenging psychological conditions, generating stress, depression, and other potential long-term mental health issues. One of the long-term effects of the pandemic measures might be related to how we make moral decisions. This subject is important considering that specifically in this difficult period, a lot of decisions need to be made, by the health authorities, by the governments of the countries, by the doctors, as well as by any individual. Recent work has proved that moral-decision making was, indeed, modulated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, why is this happening, or any relationship between this modulation and the affective states of the people during times of crisis remains unclear. Consequently, there are a pair of questions regarding this subject that need to be addressed: Do people follow more utilitarian or more deontological approaches given the extreme conditions of a pandemic? Trying to give a response to these questions, in the current study an online experiment was run. Firstly, we assessed what was the effect of the pandemics on the affective states of the participants, by asking them to provide affective ratings for a set of images and report on their emotional states during the pandemics. Afterward, they were given a set of classical moral dilemmas, evaluating the way they make moral decisions. In this study, there were observed trends showing that more emotionally affected people are making more utilitarian decisions, but the results were not significant statistically. Moreover, people that have reported that they felt the sensation of panic during the COVID-19 pandemic showed less consistency in their responses while solving moral dilemmas. Another important finding of this report is that people had the tendency of making more deontological decisions while being part of a group. Given the importance of morals in our society, this study is relevant, not only to raise awareness about the pandemic-potentiated biases that may interfere with the way people are making moral decisions but also to help find solutions for mitigating eventual concerning patterns.