Citation

Weippert M, Rickler M, Kluck S, Behrens K, Bastian M, Mau-Moeller A, Bruhn S, Lischke A. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 2018; 12: e268.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00268

PMID

30534061

PMCID

PMC6276357

Abstract

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.

Language: en

Keywords

cognition; cortisol; effort; exhaustion; moral judgment; strenuous exercise; stress; utilitarian moral