Reflections on Moral Decision-Making: A Qualitative Analysis of Holocaust Survivors

Don Asher Cohen

Contemporary moral theorists stress the difficulties that trauma survivors face when making moral decisions. Moral decision-making has been demonstrated to be the outcome of an emotion regulation process and trauma survivors are particularly vulnerable to emotional dysregulation. As that is the case, research has primarily focused on trauma survivors’ inability to resolve hypothetical moral dilemmas. However, everyday life is inundated with subtle, morally-relevant decisions that survivors must make. To shed light on how trauma survivors make commonplace moral decisions, this study examined the moral decision making of Holocaust Survivors (N=4) who experienced life in a concentration camp between the ages of 12 and 16. Thematic analysis of Holocaust narratives revealed that the salience of compassion, duty/reverence, egalitarianism, justice, Holocaust vigilance, identity, other preservation, self-preservation, relationship/community-preference, religiosity/spirituality, and reciprocity motivated morally-relevant decisions. These findings contradict extant theories on trauma survivors and moral decision making and suggest that, over time, survivors become increasingly able to regulate their emotions and integrate them into moral decisions.