Effects of Money on Utilitarian and Deontological Inclinations in Moral Judgments: A Study Using Process-Dissociation Approach

Previous research has extensively examined the impact of money on morality, yet limited attention has been given to how the mere contemplation of money influences moral reasoning and decision-making. The present study aims to address this gap by exploring how both the concept of money and the love of money shape deontological and utilitarian inclinations in moral judgments. In Study 1 (<i>N</i> = 102), we investigated the effect of money concept priming on moral thinking. Participants were primed with either the concept of money or a neutral concept through a scrambled-sentences task, and subsequently made moral decisions in 20 dilemmas adapted from Conway and Gawronski. These dilemmas required participants to decide whether to harm others in order to achieve a greater outcome. To assess participants' utilitarian and deontological tendencies, we employed the process-dissociation procedure. In Study 2 (<i>N</i> = 488), we further examined the relationship between the love of money-a long-term trait-and moral judgments. Specifically, we investigated whether four moral orientations (deliberation, rule, sentiment, and integration) mediate the relationship between the love of money and deontological/utilitarian inclinations. Participants completed the love of money scale and the moral orientation scale before reading the same 20 dilemmas from Study 1. Our findings revealed that priming the concept of money enhanced utilitarian tendencies but did not significantly affect deontological tendencies. Furthermore, the love of money was negatively correlated with deontological tendencies and positively correlated with utilitarian tendencies. Deliberation fully mediated the effect of the love of money on utilitarian tendencies and partially mediated its effect on deontological tendencies.