Science and Engineering Ethics (2005) 11, 535-551 Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2005 535 Keywords: moral dilemmas, professional ethics, neuroimaging, emotions, emotional engagement, decision-making ABSTRACT: Recent results from two different studies show evidence of strong emotional engagement in moral dilemmas that require personal involvement or ethical problems that involve significant inter-personal issues. This empirical evidence for a connection between emotional engagement and moral or ethical choices is interesting because it is related to a fundamental survival mechanism rooted in human evolution. The results lead one to question when and how emotional engagement might occur in a professional ethical situation. However, the studies employed static dilemmas or problems that offered only two choices whose outcome was certain or nearly so, whereas actual problems in professional ethics are dynamic and typically involve considerable uncertainty. The circumstances of three example cases suggest that increasing personal involvement and uncertainty could have been perceived as changes, threats, or opportunities and could therefore have elicited an emotional response as a way to ensure the reputation, integrity or success of oneself or a group to which one belongs. Such emotional engagement is only suggested and more studies and experiments are required to better characterize the role of emotional engagement in professional ethics. Introduction Two recent papers in quite different journals dealt with the results of experiments that provide convincing evidence for the nature and level of emotional engagement in subjects confronted with moral dilemmas or with problems in professional ethics. Joshua Greene and coworkers 1 used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine which parts of the brain were activated when a subject was confronted with a Address for correspondence: W. Scott Dunbar, Associate Professor, Director, Integrated Engineering Program, University of British Columbia, 6350 Stores Road, Rm 517, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4; email: wsd@igen.ubc.ca. Paper received, 8 February 2005: revised, 1 August 2005: accepted, 30 September 2005. 1353-3452 © 2005 Opragen Publications, POB 54, Guildford GU1 2YF, UK. http://www.opragen.co.uk Emotional Engagement in Professional Ethics W. Scott Dunbar Integrated Engineering Program, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Canada