Conditioning And Evaluative Conducting Moral Judgments In Individuals

Throughout history there has been continuous debate on whether emotional processes motivate moral judgements in individuals. Empirical research suggests that the experience of emotions, specifically disgust, have prominent influences in moral reasoning and judgement (Ivan, 2015; Olatunji, Puncochar, & Cox, 2016; Schnall, Haidt, Clore & Jordan, 2008). Disgust, defined as “a strong feeling of disapproval or dislike, or a feeling of becoming ill caused by something unpleasant”, can be ultimately governed by an individual’s likes and dislikes (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2017). Psychologists throughout history have supported the ideology that human behaviour is governed by personal likes and dislikes, but precisely how an individual acquires their preferences continues to be the subject of rigorous debate (Hofmann, De Houwer, Perugini, Baeyens & Crombez, 2010). Literature suggests that most likes and dislikes are individually learnt rather than innate, and that the underlying processes behind the development of likes and dislikes can be closely contrasted with Pavlov’s (1927) Classical Conditioning (De Houwer, Thomas & Baeyens, 2001). Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the liking of stimulus that results from pairing that stimulus with another positive or negative stimulus (De Houwer, Thomas & Baeyens, 2001). …show more content…
Futhermore, EC involves a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus) being paired with an affective stimulus (unconditioned stimulus), this is done to determine if any there are any changes in the valance of the neutral stimulus (De Houwer, Thomas & Baeyens,