Moral dilemmas typically entail directly causing harm (said to violate deontological ethics) to maximize overall outcomes (said to uphold utilitarian ethics). The dual process model suggests harm-rejection judgments derive from affective reactions to harm, whereas harm-acceptance judgments derive from cognitive evaluations of outcomes. Recently, Miller, Hannikainen, and Cushman (2014) argued that harm-rejection judgments primarily reflect self-focused-rather than other-focused-emotional responses, because only action aversion (self-focused reactions to the thought of causing harm), not outcome aversion (other-focused reactions to witnessing suffering), consistently predicted dilemma responses. However, they assessed only conventional relative dilemma judgments that treat harm-rejection and outcome-maximization responses as diametric opposites. Instead, we employed process dissociation to assess these response inclinations independently. In two studies (N = 558), we replicated Miller and colleagues' findings for conventional relative judgments, but process dissociation revealed that outcome aversion positively predicted both deontological and utilitarian inclinations-which canceled out for relative judgments. Additionally, individual differences associated with affective processing-psychopathy and empathic concern-correlated with the deontology but not utilitarian parameter. Together, these findings suggest that genuine other-oriented moralized concern for others' well-being contribute to both utilitarian and deontological response tendencies, but these tendencies nonetheless draw upon different psychological processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

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Although borderline personality disorder (BPD) features consistently show strong relations with chronic pain, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. BPD is characterized by dysregulated emotion. Given previously observed relationships between emotion dysregulation and pain, we hypothesized that components of this dysregulation-elevated and labile negative affect and emotion sensitivity-would account for the relationship between BPD features and various pain complaints in a chronic pain patient sample. Specifically, we hypothesized that negative affect would indirectly predict pain through higher emotion sensitivity to pain, operationalized as pain anxiety sensitivity. To test these hypotheses, we administered a series of self-report measures to 147 patients at a chronic pain treatment facility. As expected, BPD features predicted pain severity (β = .19, p = .029), activity interference from pain (β = .22, p = .015), and affective interference from pain (β = .41, p < .001). Using path analyses, we found that the associations between BPD features and pain severity and interference were accounted for by serial indirect pathways through affective lability then pain anxiety and, to a lesser extent, through trait anxiety then pain anxiety. This is the first study to demonstrate roles for affective lability and pain anxiety sensitivity in the association between BPD features and chronic pain complaints in a chronic pain sample. We discuss implications for the relationship between dysregulated emotion and pain as well as for psychologically-focused treatment interventions for pain. (PsycINFO Database Record

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