Impact of Stress on Moral Judgment in High-stakes Situations

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_33How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Stress; Moral Judgment; Ethical Decision-Making; Acute and Chronic Stress; Cognitive and Emotional Processes

Abstract

Stress greatly influences ethical decision-making, especially in fields that sometimes face high-stakes moral conundrums like law enforcement, military, and healthcare personnel. Although earlier studies revealed how stress influences decision-making, little is known about how acute and chronic stress, especially, affect moral judgments in real-world professional settings. This work methodically summarizes past empirical studies on the effects of acute stress (short-lived, high-stress) and chronic stress (long-term, persistent-stress) on ethical decision-making processes. Studies repeatedly show that while acute stress drives people toward quick emotional reactions over reasonable, utilitarian judgments, chronic stress causes ethical tiredness and hence reduces cognitive and emotional resources needed for ethical thinking. These findings guide the research to offer practical recommendations based on which organizational interventions—such as stress-management programs and personal practices including mindfulness and biofeedback—should be applied. Proactive stress management enables professionals to maintain ethical decision-making, thereby safeguarding both their professional integrity and public confidence.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yichen Hua
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/15
TI  - Impact of Stress on Moral Judgment in High-stakes Situations
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Mental Growth and Human Resilience (MGHR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 309
EP  - 318
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_33
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_33
ID  - Hua2025
ER  -