About emotional intelligence and moral decisions

Abstract

This commentary explores the use of interaction between moral heuristics and emotional intelligence (EI). The main insight presented is that the quality of moral decisions is very sensitive to emotions, and hence this may lead us to a better understanding of the role of emotional abilities in moral choices. In doing so, we consider how individual differences (specifically, EI) are related to moral decisions. We summarize evidence bearing on some of the ways in which EI might moderate framing effects in different moral tasks such as “the Asian disease problem” and other more real-life problems like “a divorce decision.”