Assessing the automaticity of moral processing: Efficient coding of moral information during narrative comprehension

@article{Murphy2009AssessingTA,
  title={Assessing the automaticity of moral processing: Efficient coding of moral information during narrative comprehension},
  author={Fionnuala C Murphy and Gemma Wilde and Neil Ogden and Philip J. Barnard and Andrew J. Calder},
  journal={Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)},
  year={2009},
  volume={62},
  pages={41 - 49}
}
A long-standing theoretical debate concerns the involvement of principled reasoning versus relatively automatic intuitive-emotional processing in moral cognition. To address this, we investigated whether the mental models formed during story comprehension contain a moral dimension and whether this process is affected by cognitive load. A total of 72 participants read stories about fictional characters in a range of moral situations, such as a husband being tempted to commit adultery. Each story… 
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