Abstract
While extensive research has been conducted on adults’ judgments in moral sacrificial dilemmas, there is little research on adolescents. The present study aimed at: (1) adding further empirical evidence about adolescents’ moral decisions (deontological vs. utilitarian) in sacrificial moral dilemmas and (2) investigating how these moral decisions relate with gender, school grade, emotional traits (callous-unemotional traits), context-related experiences (perceived parental rejection and community violence exposure), and moral-related factors (moral disengagement and universalism value). A sample of 755 Italian adolescents (54.7% females; Mean age=16.45, SD=1.61) attending the second and the fifth year of secondary school took part in the study. Two sacrificial trolley-type dilemmas (where harmful actions promote the greater good) were presented. In the “switch” scenario (impersonal sacrificial dilemma), the choice is whether to hit a switch to save five people killing only one person. In the “footbridge” scenario (personal sacrificial dilemma), the choice is whether to push a large man off a footbridge saving five persons. For each scenario, participants had to indicate whether the proposed action was “morally acceptable” or not. Data were analyzed performing generalized linear mixed models. Our results showed that: (1) Adolescents were more likely to indicate as admissible to hit the switch rather than to push the large man; (2) male adolescents, compared to females, were more likely to say it was morally acceptable to intervene in the footbridge dilemma, whereas younger adolescents said it was morally acceptable both in the switch and the footbridge situations; and (3) higher levels of callous-unemotional traits, perceived parental rejection, and moral disengagement, on the one hand, and lower levels of universalism, on the other hand, were associated to higher admissibility to intervene in the footbridge scenario. Higher community violence exposure was associated with a lower propensity to intervene in the switch scenario. Overall, the present study expands the research on sacrificial dilemmas involving a sample of adolescents. The findings support previous studies concerning the role of emotions in making moral decisions but, at the same, open new perspectives regarding the role of contextual experiences and moral-related factors.
Highlights
We firstly identified within the sample participants who made deontological vs. utilitarian judgments to impersonal and personal moral scenarios (Research question 1) and compared them by gender and school grade (10th vs. 13th graders; Research question 2) using a set of chi-square statistics performed in IBM SPSS 21 (IBM, Armonk, NY, United States)
Significant differences by gender [χ2 (1) = 16.50; p < 0.001] emerged only when youth were faced with the footbridge dilemma, with 121 males out of 342 (35.4%) making utilitarian judgments compared to 91 females out of 413 (22%)
No significant gender difference emerged when subjects were presented with the switch dilemma, with 233 males out of 342 (68.1%) making utilitarian judgments compared to 254 females out of 413 (61.5%)
Summary
In the last two decades, psychological research on morality assigned a prominent role to the intuitionist models, according to which moral judgments are driven by automatic, unconscious, and affective reactions (Haidt, 2001; Cosmides and Tooby, 2004; Cushman et al, 2006; Hauser et al, 2007; Haidt, 2012) rather than by conscious cognitive-based processes (Kohlberg, 1968; Turiel, 1989; Turiel, 2006). From the sixties to the 2000s, psychological research on moral development has yielded a wealth of evidence in support of the assumption that reasoning is the milestone of moral judgment. Within the framework of the social cognitive theory, Bandura (1986) introduced the concept of moral agency according to which the conscious acceptance of moral standards guides individuals’ beliefs and behaviors. The theory of values (Schwartz, 1992) claimed that values are enduring goals that refer to “what people consider important” (Roccas et al, 2002) and identified ten universal values, among which “universalism,” in particular, represents intrinsically moral goals guiding individuals’ moral evaluations (Schwartz, 2007)
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