Performance in Personal and Impersonal Moral Judgment According to Positive and Negative Subliminal Emotional Experiences

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of subliminal emotional experiences in personal and impersonal moral judgment. A total number of 35 students (20 females and 15 males) from Kharazmi University were selected using random sampling and were individually induced by subliminal neutral, positive, and negative emotional experiences. After each emotion induction stage, the subjects responded to two personal and impersonal moral stories. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measures. The results showed that the induction of subliminal positive and negative emotional experience lead to non-utilitarianism in personal moral judgment but have no effect on impersonal moral judgment. The results reflect the significant role of emotional experiences in moral judgment based cognitive processes.