Moral judgments are (most probably) robust to physical fatigue: evidence from Process Dissociation analyses in athletes and firefighters.

Across two experiments, we examined the effect of physical fatigue on moral decision-making. A total sample of N = 303 participants was subjected to acute physical exercise. Half of the participants were presented with moral dilemmas before the physical exercise, and the other half after the exercise. We measured moral judgement using a shortened version of the Process Dissociation procedure, allowing us to investigate: (1) decisions in the traditional sacrificial dilemmas and (2) deontological and utilitarian moral inclinations. The results showed that physical fatigue had no significant effect on moral judgements in nine out of ten statistical tests. This suggests a unique resilience of moral judgments to physical fatigue, in contrast to what is known about cognitive fatigue. All data and materials, data are available at https://osf.io/musc8/?view_only=328aee8087dd4203a9a576e350b12327.