“It Sounds Wrong…” Does music affect moral judgement?

Can simply listening to a music piece affect the harshness of a moral judgement? A priming experiment was run to answer this question. Participants gave moral judgements, after listening to musical pieces inducing certain emotions (Joy, Relax, Sadness, Annoyance). After reading some vignettes about moral transgressions and rating them, they were asked to fill in a self-report affect questionnaire concerning the emotions experienced during their listening, and a test assessing musical sensitivity. In accordance with Greene’s dual-process moral theory, classic moral vignettes fell into two categories: “high emotional involvement” (HEI) vs. “low emotional involvement” (LEI). Results show that the two emotions with a negative valence (Sadness, Annoyance) worsened the overall harshness of participants’ moral judgements while the positive emotions (Joy, Relax) weakened it; in the most arousing ones (Joy, Annoyance) the effect was increased, and the annoyance condition determined the highest moral harshness. This effect was stronger in the HEI moral questions, as predicted by the dual-process moral theory.