Is it fair to kill one to save five? How just world beliefs shape sacrificial moral decision-making
Is it fair to kill one to save five? How just world beliefs shape sacrificial moral decision-making
Sacrificing a target to save a group violates deontological ethics against harm but upholds utilitarian ethics to maximize outcomes. Although theorists examine many factors that influence dilemma decisions, we examined justice concerns: We manipulated the moral character of sacrificial targets, then measured participants' dilemma responses and just world beliefs. Across four studies (N=1116), participants considering guilty versus innocent targets scored lower on harm-rejection (deontological) responding, but not outcome maximizing (utilitarian) responding assessed via process dissociation. Just world beliefs (both personal and general) predicted lower utilitarian and somewhat lower deontological responding, but these effects disappeared when accounting for shared variance with psychopathy. Results suggest that dilemma decisions partly reflect the moral status of sacrificial targets and concerns about the fairness implications of sacrificing innocent targets to save innocent groups.
just world beliefs, moral dilemmas, morality, person perception, process dissociation
Conway, Paul
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Lam, Jason
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Dawtry, Rael
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Gheorghiu, Ana
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Conway, Paul
765aaaf9-173f-44cf-be9a-c8ffbb51e286
Lam, Jason
2452121a-ca5d-4b3a-8f50-f7523be61c43
Dawtry, Rael
8feaa0c0-92c4-4e96-a6e0-120d113d2534
Gheorghiu, Ana
776340ae-998c-47d7-a3a2-7d94ec726790
Conway, Paul, Lam, Jason, Dawtry, Rael and Gheorghiu, Ana
(2024)
Is it fair to kill one to save five? How just world beliefs shape sacrificial moral decision-making.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
(doi:10.1177/01461672241287815).
Abstract
Sacrificing a target to save a group violates deontological ethics against harm but upholds utilitarian ethics to maximize outcomes. Although theorists examine many factors that influence dilemma decisions, we examined justice concerns: We manipulated the moral character of sacrificial targets, then measured participants' dilemma responses and just world beliefs. Across four studies (N=1116), participants considering guilty versus innocent targets scored lower on harm-rejection (deontological) responding, but not outcome maximizing (utilitarian) responding assessed via process dissociation. Just world beliefs (both personal and general) predicted lower utilitarian and somewhat lower deontological responding, but these effects disappeared when accounting for shared variance with psychopathy. Results suggest that dilemma decisions partly reflect the moral status of sacrificial targets and concerns about the fairness implications of sacrificing innocent targets to save innocent groups.
Text
Conway et al, 2024, Fair to Kill One to Save Five, PSPB
- Accepted Manuscript
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conway-et-al-2024-is-it-fair-to-kill-one-to-save-five-how-just-world-beliefs-shape-sacrificial-moral-decision-making
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Accepted/In Press date: 11 September 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 25 October 2024
Keywords:
just world beliefs, moral dilemmas, morality, person perception, process dissociation
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 495750
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/495750
ISSN: 0146-1672
PURE UUID: d9b6c0cb-f537-4c8c-acfa-3b809bfb57d7
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Date deposited: 21 Nov 2024 17:43
Last modified: 22 Nov 2024 03:07
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Author:
Paul Conway
Author:
Jason Lam
Author:
Rael Dawtry
Author:
Ana Gheorghiu
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