Abortion moral judgement: Influence of previous attitude, deonthological and utilitarian principles

Abstract

Moral judgments are part of everyday life and cognitive processes are used as a basis for formulating them. The objective of this study is to measure the covariant effect of prior attitude toward a moral issue in the relationship between cognitive overload and judgment of a moral issue. The first experiment tests the direct relationship between moral principles (i.e. deontological and utilitarian) and cognitive overload in a moral judgment task. The second experiment tests the interference of prior attitude in a moral judgment task. In both experiments the sample was composed by undergraduate students, mostly men. The results suggest that cognitive overload induces a deontological judgment and that prior attitude toward a moral object interferes significantly in the moral judgment task, regardless of the context.