IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v13y2010i2p175-190.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intuitions, emotions and gut reactions in decisions about risks: towards a different interpretation of 'neuroethics'

Author

Listed:
  • Sabine Roeser

Abstract

Empirical research by Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Greene seems to support the idea that in moral decision-making under uncertainty, people follow their initial intuitions and 'gut feelings'. Rational judgements are at most rationalizations or afterthoughts in our judgements about risks. This paper will challenge the theoretical assumptions made by Greene and Haidt, by proposing a different theory of ethical intuitions and emotions. Ethical intuitions and emotions should not be conflated with spontaneous 'gut reactions'. Rather, ethical intuitions and emotions can be the source and the result of ethical reflection and deliberation. This allows for different interpretations of the empirical findings of Haidt and Greene and of psychologists who study emotional responses to risks, such as Paul Slovic and George Loewenstein. Emotional and intuitive responses to risk should not be seen as heuristics that are prone to be biases; rather, they should be seen as invaluable sources of insight when it comes to judging the moral acceptability of risks.

Suggested Citation

  • Sabine Roeser, 2010. "Intuitions, emotions and gut reactions in decisions about risks: towards a different interpretation of 'neuroethics'," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 175-190, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:13:y:2010:i:2:p:175-190
    DOI: 10.1080/13669870903126275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669870903126275
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669870903126275?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Ojala, 2013. "Emotional Awareness: On the Importance of Including Emotional Aspects in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)," Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, , vol. 7(2), pages 167-182, September.
    2. Sleenhoff, Susanne & Landeweerd, Laurens & Osseweijer, Patricia, 2015. "Bio-basing society by including emotions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 78-83.
    3. Chorus, Caspar G., 2015. "Models of moral decision making: Literature review and research agenda for discrete choice analysis," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 69-85.
    4. Mian Numan Raheem & M. Adrees, 2021. "The Effect of Risk and Uncertainty Factors on Managerial Decision Making," Journal of Education and Vocational Research, AMH International, vol. 12(1), pages 30-37.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:13:y:2010:i:2:p:175-190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.