Emotional Responses in Clinical Ethics Consultation Decision-Making: An Exploratory Study

Margherita Dahò is a postdoctoral researcher in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Palermo, where she is also an adjunct professor. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences, with a dissertation on the influence of emotions on moral reasoning in healthcare settings. She was involved in the European Cancer Care Beacon project, which aims to reduce disparities in oncology care. The project focused on developing decision-support systems for patients and specialists, assessing their acceptability, applying digital technologies to evaluate the mental health of oncology patients, and identifying barriers to inclusion in healthcare services.She collaborated with international institutions, including the Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota, where she was a visiting researcher and contributed to clinical ethics consultations, and Columbia University Medical Center, where she worked on projects related to neonatal palliative care and end-of-life comfort assessment. Additionally, she participated in studies on VR for cognitive and psychiatric rehabilitation at the Italian Consortium for Medical Research.Her interests range from VR and digital tools for mental health assessment and cognitive rehabilitation to robotics for active aging, psychology of thinking and decision-making.She is a member of the Clinical Ethics Research Center at the University of Insubria and the International Research Center for Theoretical and Applied Cognitive Sciences at the University of Messina.