Abstract
Is it acceptable and moral to sacrifice a few people’s lives to save many others? Research on moral dilemmas in psychology, experimental philosophy, and neuropsychology has shown that respondents judge utilitarian personal moral actions (footbridge dilemma) as less appropriate than equivalent utilitarian impersonal moral actions (trolley dilemma). Accordingly, theorists (e.g., Greene et al., 2001) have argued that judgments of appropriateness in personal moral dilemmas are more emotionally salient and cognitively demanding (taking more time to be rational) than impersonal moral dilemmas. Our novel findings show an effect of psychological accessibility (driven by partial contextual information; Kahneman, 2003) on utilitarian moral behavior and response time for rational choices. Enhanced accessibility of utilitarian outcomes through comprehensive information about moral actions and consequences boosted utility maximization in moral choices, with rational choices taking less time. Moreover, our result suggests that previous results indicating emotional interference, with rational choices taking more time to make, may have been artifacts of presenting partial information.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1029-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Is it acceptable and moral to sacrifice a few people’s lives to save many others? Research on moral dilemmas in psychology, experimental philosophy, and neuropsychology has shown that respondents judge utilitarian personal moral actions as less appropriate than equivalent utilitarian impersonal moral actions
In an attempt to provide an account of the above result in terms of the relationship between implicit and explicit cognitive processes in moral judgments, Greene and colleagues (2001) proposed a dual-process theory of moral behavior, stating that moral judgments can be driven via both (i) implicit, fast, affective, and (ii) explicit, slow, controlled psychological mechanisms (Forbes & Grafman, 2010; Greene et al, 2001; Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Moore, Clark, & Kane, 2008)
The participants were presented with two different opportunities: in the trolley dilemma, to hit a switch and make the trolley change its track, killing one person tied to another rail, or to do nothing and let the five people die; in the footbridge dilemma, to push a person off the bridge and onto the tracks below where his large body will stop the trolley, saving the five people tied up onto the track, or to do nothing and let the five people die
Summary
Is it acceptable and moral to sacrifice a few people’s lives to save many others? Research on moral dilemmas in psychology, experimental philosophy, and neuropsychology has shown that respondents judge utilitarian personal moral actions (footbridge dilemma) as less appropriate than equivalent utilitarian impersonal moral actions (trolley dilemma). We further reduce differences in utilitarian accessibility by offering a choice question of appropriateness, which accounts for both utilitarian alternatives (and their consequences) in moral actions (rational and irrational choice).
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