Three studies examined the relationship between emotions and moral judgment from an interpersonal perspective. In Studies 1 and 2, participants justified their decisions in sacrificial dilemmas to an imagined interlocutor. Linguistic analyses revealed that Don’t Sacrifice justifications contained more anger-related language than sadness-related language, whereas Sacrifice justifications contained roughly equal proportions of anger and sadness language. In Study 3, participants made character inferences about an actor who chose to/refused to sacrifice one person to save multiple people. We manipulated the actor’s ratio of anger to sadness. Participants rated the Don’t Sacrifice actor more negatively when they displayed high anger relative to sadness but rated the Sacrifice actor negatively whenever they exhibited high anger (independent of sadness). These data highlight novel ways in which actors and observers use emotions to complement the substance of a moral argument.

三项研究从人际关系的角度研究了情绪与道德判断之间的关系。在研究 1 和 2 中，参与者向想象中的对话者证明他们在牺牲困境中的决定是合理的。语言分析表明，不要牺牲理由包含的愤怒相关语言多于悲伤相关语言，而牺牲理由包含的愤怒和悲伤语言的比例大致相等。在研究 3 中，参与者对选择/拒绝牺牲一个人以拯救多人的演员进行性格推断。我们操纵了演员的愤怒与悲伤的比例。当参与者表现出相对于悲伤的高愤怒时，参与者对不要牺牲演员的评价更负面，但每当他们表现出高度愤怒（与悲伤无关）时，他们就会对牺牲演员进行负面评价。