Personality correlates and utilitarian judgments in the everyday context: Psychopathic traits and differential effects of empathy, social dominance orientation, and dehumanization beliefs

Abstract

In this study, we investigated how psychopathic traits, social dominance orientation (SDO), dehumanization beliefs, and empathy for the victim (affective and cognitive) affected utilitarian judgments and choices of action in everyday dilemma situations: ostracism and job termination dilemmas. Participants (N = 439) were asked to relationally harm one person (exclude him/her from a group of friends or terminate his/her employment contract) for maximizing the overall benefits. The results showed that psychopathic traits predicted the endorsement of relational harm onto an identifiable victim in the friendship and job-related contexts. In the ostracism dilemma, dehumanization beliefs predicted utilitarian judgments better than SDO, whereas SDO predicted utilitarian judgments and choices of action better than dehumanization beliefs in the job termination dilemma. In both types of dilemmas, affective empathy was associated with non-utilitarian judgments, whereas cognitive empathy was not. Cognitive empathy was not associated with utilitarian judgments, but unlike affective empathy, it predicted utilitarian choices of action in the job termination dilemma. Overall, the results demonstrate that utilitarian judgments and choices in everyday dilemmas are bound to interpersonal cues, and except for psychopathic traits, correlates affecting utilitarian bias differ across situations.