Abstract
When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. Here we analyze responses to three sacrificial dilemmas by 70,000 participants in 10 languages and 42 countries. In every country, the three dilemmas displayed the same qualitative ordering of sacrifice acceptability, suggesting that this ordering is best explained by basic cognitive processes rather than cultural norms. The quantitative acceptability of each sacrifice, however, showed substantial country-level variations. We show that low relational mobility (where people are more cautious about not alienating their current social partners) is strongly associated with the rejection of sacrifices for the greater good (especially for Eastern countries), which may be explained by the signaling value of this rejection. We make our dataset fully available as a public resource for researchers studying universals and variations in human morality.
Highlights
When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world
We report on the moral universals and variations in responses to three variants of the trolley problem [10, 11], one of the focal points of contemporary moral psychology [12]
While the Moral Machine website was primarily designed to explore the ethics of self-driving cars [13], it offered a “Classic” mode, where visitors made decisions about the traditional Switch, Loop, and Footbridge variants of the trolley problem; these are the data that we report in this article
Summary
When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. Based on the responses of 70,000 participants, collected in 10 languages and 42 countries with a lower bound of 200 responses per scenario and country (Fig. 1A), we firmly consolidate some results of previous comparative surveys, and provide evidence of cultural correlates that were not possible to assess from other, smaller datasets. To this end, we leveraged the popularity of the “Moral Machine” website (moralmachine.mit.edu). Every culture prohibits at least some form of homicide, while disagreeing about which exact form of homicide is wrong [4, 5]: Different cultures can have different views on what counts as self-defense or provocation, or on the offenses that should be punished with capital execution
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