Emotions and beliefs about morality can change one another.

A dual-process theory postulates that belief and emotions about moral assertions can affect one another. The present study corroborated this prediction. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 showed that the pleasantness of a moral assertion – from loathing it to loving it – correlated with how strongly individuals believed it, i.e., its subjective probability. But, despite repeated testing, this relation did not occur for factual assertions. To create the correlation, it sufficed to change factual assertions, such as, "Advanced countries are democracies," into moral assertions, "Advanced countries should be democracies". Two further experiments corroborated the two-way causal relations for moral assertions. Experiment 4 showed that recall of pleasant memories about moral assertions increased their believability, and that the recall of unpleasant memories had the opposite effect. Experiment 5 showed that the creation of reasons to believe moral assertions increased the pleasantness of the emotions they evoked, and that the creation of reasons to disbelieve moral assertions had the opposite effect. Hence, emotions can change beliefs about moral assertions; and reasons can change emotions about moral assertions. We discuss the implications of these results for alternative theories of morality. • Our dual-process theory predicts that beliefs and emotions about moral assertions are correlated and that they can affect one another. • The present study corroborated these predictions. • As results showed, the degree to which individuals believed moral assertions, but not factual assertions, correlated with their emotional reactions to it, from loving it to loathing it. • As other results showed, a change in emotion can change degrees of belief in moral assertions, and a change in degrees of belief can change emotions about moral assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]