Reply: The Power of the Cognition/Emotion Distinction for Morality

Abstract

Bazerman, Gino, Shu, and Tsay (2011) argue that separate decision making leads to more emotive and less reasoned decisions than joint decision making. Kaplan (2014) writes that our explanation creates a false dichotomy between the emotional self and the cognitive self. His reasoning is based on the conscious experience of coexisting emotion and cognition, the role of emotion in joint decision making, and the role of cognition in separate decision making. We agree. Emotions and cognitions co-occur, and the processes coexist in both joint and separate modes of decision making. We have never claimed otherwise. Our article made the directional claim that “when people think about one option at a time (in separate evaluation mode), they are more likely to base their moral judgments on emotions than when they compare two or more options simultaneously (in joint evaluation mode)” (Bazerman et al., 2011, p. 290). We posit and substantiate through empirical evidence that emotion and cognition play relatively …