Selfish or altruistic? The influence of thinking styles and stereotypes on moral decision-making

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the influence of individual thinking styles and stereotypes on moral decision-making. 114 participants completed the Rational-Experiential Inventory-40, after which they performed a moral decision-making task in which participants were asked to decide whether to sacrifice their self-interest to help the protagonists in the moral dilemmas. The results showed that: (1) Experiential participants were more likely to make altruistic moral decisions as compared to Rational participants. (2) Participants were more willing to help the protagonists who had both high-warmth and high-competence, and were less willing to help the protagonists with both low-warmth and low-competence. (3) The moral decisions of the rational participants were influenced by stereotypes of both warmth and competence, while the experiential participants were affected only by the stereotypes of warmth. These results suggest that rational participants may show preference towards protagonists with different levels of both warmth and competence during moral decision-making, and that experiential participants may only prefer to help protagonists with high levels of warmth. This study provides a reference point from which we might further explore the influencing factors of moral decision-making, and helps in understanding how people might make more appropriate decisions in the face of similar scenarios.