Mad and glad: Musically induced emotions have divergent impact on morals

Moral judgments can be positive or negative: we can judge action as good or wrong. Here we show that good judgments and wrong judgments are influenced by incidental emotions. Using instrumental music as an induction method, we show that anger, but not happiness, increases the tendency to judge actions as wrong (Experiment 1). We also show that happiness increases the tendency to praise actions as both good and obligatory, while anger reduces these judgments (Experiment 2). These findings extend the literature on emotions and moral judgment by demonstrating impact of anger and happiness, and by contrasting goodness and wrongness in their emotional valence. The findings also show that music can have a significant impact on moral judgment. This is important because music is a highly prevalent situational variable. The use of instrumental music may have advantages over other induction techniques because it does not carry specific semantic cues that might encourage people to think about morality.