Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions

Abstract

This research considers biasing effects on the expression of moral intuitions. Participants in Study 1 were asked to resolve some hypothetical moral dilemmas that involved the death of one or another set of individuals. For half of the participants, the problems were phrased using a Kill wording and for the other half a Save wording, although the outcomes were identical in each case. In Study 2, framing effects were produced by posing dilemma problems in different orders and in different contexts. In Study 1, the Kill-Save wording difference strongly influenced the resolution of the problems. In Study 2, if the problems involved a single kind of dilemma, the order in which the dilemmas were presented affected the pattern of response, whereas order had no major effect for another two series using different dilemmas. Thus, there were framing effects produced by differences in wording and order that could influence the decisions people make when presented with dilemmas, but the effects were not always large nor did they always appear. The presence and strength of the effects seem to depend on a variety of psychological factors that the problem sets activate. These findings are considered within the perspective of the evolution of cognitive strategies.