Judging the morality of utilitarian actions: How poor utilitarian accessibility makes judges irrational

Kusev, Petko; van Schaik, Paul; Alzahrani, Shrooq; Lonigro, Samantha; Purser, Harry

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.

Citation

Kusev, P., van Schaik, P., Alzahrani, S., Lonigro, S., & Purser, H. Judging the morality of utilitarian actions: How poor utilitarian accessibility makes judges irrational. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1029-2

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Apr 27, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2016
• Journal: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
• Electronic ISSN: 1069-9384
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1029-2
• Keywords: Utility; moral dilemmas; accessibility; judgments; rational choice
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/783528
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1029-2
• Contract Date: May 21, 2016