Despite the prevalence of physical exertion and fatigue during military, firefighting and disaster medicine operations, sports or even daily life, their acute effects on moral reasoning and moral decision-making have never been systematically investigated. To test the effects of physical exertion on moral reasoning and moral decision-making, we administered a moral dilemma task to 32 male participants during a moderate or high intensity cycling intervention. Participants in the high intensity cycling group tended to show more non-utilitarian reasoning and more non-utilitarian decision-making on impersonal but not on personal dilemmas than participants in the moderate intensity cycling group. Exercise-induced exertion and fatigue, thus, shifted moral reasoning and moral decision-making in a non-utilitarian rather than utilitarian direction, presumably due to an exercise-induced limitation of prefrontally mediated executive resources that are more relevant for utilitarian than non-utilitarian reasoning and decision-making.
CITATION STYLE
Weippert, M., Rickler, M., Kluck, S., Behrens, K., Bastian, M., Mau-Moeller, A., … Lischke, A. (2018). It’s harder to push, when I have to push hard—physical exertion and fatigue changes reasoning and decision-making on hypothetical moral dilemmas in males. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00268
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