In collaboration with Payame Noor University and Iranian Association of Social Psychology

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 M. A. in General Psychology, Kharazmi University

2 Associate Professor in Department of General Psychology, Kharazmi University

3 Associated Professor in Department of Clinical Psychology, Kharazmi University

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effective of emotion regulation strategies training on moral judgments with regard to the capacity of working memory. Thus, hundred and fifty eight university students (45 males and 113 female) from Kharazmi University were participated in this study. All participants were tested using working memory index and based on their scores distributions, two groups with high and low working memory abilities were selected for the training sessions. Each group, 14 participants (9 females and 5 males), have been trained through the emotion regulation strategies for ten sessions. Moral judgments in five different categories (personal, easy personal, difficult personal, impersonal and control dilemmas) have been examined in three different stages Data were subjected mixed analysis of variance. The results showed that there were no significant differences in utilitarian responses and reaction times to moral judgment dilemmas between two groups with low and high working memory scores. Also, the findings indicated that emotion regulation strategy training resulted in an increase of utilitarian moral choices for all of the moral dilemmas relative to control dilemmas. However, emotion regulation strategy training had an effect on the reaction time in response to the as well as difficult personal moral dilemmas. According to these findings, it seems emotion regulation strategy training had an effect in utilitarian responses and the reaction time, especially for personal moral dilemmas. This could be considered as an indicator of how emotion regulatory strategy training can influence the emotional response during moral judgments.

Keywords

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