Emotion in imaginative resistance

ABSTRACT

Imaginative resistance refers to cases in which one’s otherwise flexible imaginative capacity is constrained by an unwillingness or inability to imaginatively engage with a given claim. In three studies, we explored which specific imaginative demands engender resistance when imagining morally deviant worlds and whether individual differences in emotion predict the degree of this resistance. In Study 1 (N = 176), participants resisted the notion that harmful actions could be morally acceptable in the world of a narrative regardless of the author’s claims about these actions but did not resist imagining that a perpetrator of harm could believe their actions to be morally acceptable. In Study 2 (N = 167) we replicated the findings of Study 1 and showed that imaginative resistance is greatest among participants who experience more negative affect in response to imagining harm and are lower in either trait anxiety or trait psychopathy. In Study 3 (N = 210) we show that this is the case even when the harms assessed include both low-severity (i.e., emotional harm) and high-severity (i.e., killing) cases. Thus, people’s moral beliefs constrain their ability to imagine hypothetical moral alternatives, although this ability systematically varies on the basis of stable individual differences in emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Imaginative resistance
• emotion
• moral judgment
• psychopathy
• anxiety

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/q3xvj/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dylan Campbell

Dylan Campbell is a PhD candidate at University at Albany, SUNY. His research focuses on topics at the intersection of morality, philosophy, politics, and law.

William Kidder

William Kidder is a PhD candidate at the University at Albany, SUNY. His research focuses on empathy and moral imagination.

Jason D’Cruz

Jason D'Cruz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University at Albany, SUNY. His present research focuses on trust and trustworthiness, pretense, and imagination. 

Brendan Gaesser

Brendan Gaesser is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University at Albany, SUNY and a member of the Purpose Co-operative makerspace. His lab studies how our capacity for imagination relates to empathy, altruism, and moral judgment.