Autores: Ana Teresa Martins, Tiago Sobral, Antonia María Jiménez-Ros, Luís Faísca

Abstract

Stress affects the cognitive and emotional processes involved in moral decisions, leading to less utilitarian choices. Our study examines whether specific negative (dark) personality traits – narcissism and Machiavellianism – moderate the impact of stress on moral decision-making. Forty undergraduate volunteers were classified into three trait groups («high Machiavellian», «high narcissistic» and «low negative traits»), randomly assigned to two experimental conditions (stress vs. control) and asked to perform a moral decision task. The main results suggest that participants under acute stress made fewer utilitarian decisions when  faced  with  personal  moral  decisions  compared  to  participants  from  the  control  group  and  that  this  effect  was  partially  moderated by negative personality traits. We concluded that acute stress may reduce utilitarian decisions in moral dilemmas, but that negative personality traits seem to attenuate the effect of stress on moral decision-making.

Páginas: 205-216