Abstract:

Moral dilemmas, defined as scenarios describing situations where the person has to make a moral choice between a utilitarian and a deontological option are frequently used in the study of the moral judgments of lay people. There are no national or international studies investigating the moral judgments of psychotherapists in occupational situations based on deontological/utilitarian classification. In addition, there are only a few moral dilemma studies using Turkish samples. Furthermore, it is a well-known phenomenon that research in the field of psychology would produce different results due to the effects of cultural differences. This points to the possibility that whether a moral dilemma scenario creates high or low conflict is partially dependent on culture. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to determine both classical and psychotherapist high conflict moral dilemmas in Turkish culture. The relationship between the participants' mood and their moral judgments was also explored. Forty-two psychotherapists and 108 lay people (undergraduate students and university graduate adults) participated in the current study. While psychotherapists answered the psychotherapist dilemmas, lay people answered the classical dilemmas. Four out of 20 classical moral dilemmas and five out of 10 psychotherapist scenarios were identified as high conflict moral dilemmas. The mood of the participants was measured by the Positive-Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) both before and after reading the related moral dilemmas. The possible mood changes of the participants with regard to the related scenarios were analyzed. Regarding the classical moral dilemmas, participants' negative mood increased and positive mood decreased after reading the related scenarios. With regard to the psychotherapist scenarios, the negative mood of the participants increased. The results indicated a positive relationship between negative mood and the deontological judgments in lay people. No significant association between mood and deontological/utilitarian decisions was found in the psychotherapist group. These results and their implications were also discussed within the framework of the Dual-Process Theory.

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