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To provide deeper insights into the relationships between psychopathic traits and utilitarian moral judgment, we studied N = 702 adults using three psychopathy scales: (a) the Levenson's Self-report Psychopathy Scale; (b) the Psychopathic Personality Inventory; and (c) the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure; and three measures of utilitarian moral judgment: (a) trolley dilemmas; (b) the Consequences, Norms, and Inaction (CNI) model of moral decision-making; and (c) the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale. When using the traditional approach to moral judgment (i.e., trolley dilemmas, instrumental harm, traditional score from the CNI model), we found that higher levels of psychopathic traits were associated with a higher utilitarian tendency. When using the modeling approach, we found that a higher level of psychopathic traits was related to weaker sensitivity to moral norms and less action averse in morally problematic situations. In addition, we found negative associations between impartial beneficence and all psychopathy scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trolley dilemmas are widely used to elicit moral intuitions.Most people do not think it would be morally right to pusha heavy man from a bridge, thereby killing him, in order toavoid the death of several other people. Here weempirically tested a prediction by Unger (1996) who claimsthat adding more options to this scenario would shiftpeople’s intuition from the normally preferred option ofdoing nothing to the utilitarian option of killing the heavyman. While not finding significant results with Unger’soriginal materials, an experiment with adapted materialsconfirmed the assumption that pushing one person is morelikely to be preferred to not intervening if certain additionaloptions are provided. Moreover, we found that moralintuitions are transferred from several-option cases to twooptioncases (and the other way around). We discuss somepossible psychological explanations for and normativeimplications of these findings

The dual-process model of moral cognition suggests that outcome-focused, consequentialist moral judgment in sacrificial moral dilemmas is driven by a deliberative, reasoned, cognitive process. Although many studies have demonstrated a positive association of consequentialist judgment with measures of cognitive engagement, no work has investigated whether cognitive ability itself is also related to consequentialist judgment. Therefore, we conducted three studies to investigate whether participants' preference for consequentialist moral judgment is related to their intelligence. A meta-analytic integration of these three studies (with a total N = 675) uncovered no association between the two measures (r = –.02). Furthermore, a Bayesian reanalysis of the same data provided substantial evidence in favor of a null effect (BFH0 = 7.2). As such, the present studies show that if consequentialist judgments depend on deliberative reasoning, this association is not driven by cognitive ability, but by cognitive motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When is it appropriate to harm a single person to help multiple others? Psychologists have investigated this question through the study of hypothetical "trolley" dilemmas involving extreme physical harm life-or-death situations that contrast outcome-focussed, consequentialist moral reasoning with principle-focussed, deontological moral reasoning. The present studies investigate whether participants' preference for consequentialism generalises across domains. We administered traditional physical harm dilemmas as well as a trolley-type dilemma involving monetary harm. Across four studies (N = 809), an internal meta-analysis demonstrated that participants' responses to the traditional dilemmas predicted their responses to the monetary dilemma. Additionally, previous research has uncovered that primary psychopathy predicts consequentialist responses on physical harm dilemmas. The current work uncovers that this association does not generalise to monetary harm dilemmas, suggesting that the association between primary psychopathy and consequentialist reasoning is not related to consequentialist reasoning per se, but to the idiosyncrasies of traditional harm-centric trolley dilemmas instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research into moral decision-making is often taken to have normative implications. For instance, in his recent book, Greene (2013) relies on empirical findings to establish utilitarianism as a superior normative ethical theory. Kantian ethics, and deontological ethics more generally, is a rival view that Greene attacks. At the heart of Greene’s argument against deontology is the claim that deontological moral judgments are the product of certain emotions and not of reason. Deontological ethics is a mere rationalization of these emotions. Accordingly Greene maintains that deontology should be abandoned. This paper is a defense of deontological ethical theory. It argues that Greene’s argument against deontology needs further support. Greene’s empirical evidence is open to alternative interpretations. In particular, it is not clear that Greene’s characterization of alarm-like emotions that are relative to culture and personal experience is empirically tenable. Moreover, it is implausible that such emotions produce specifically deontological judgments. A rival sentimentalist view, according to which all moral judgments are determined by emotion, is at least as plausible given the empirical evidence and independently supported by philosophical theory. I therefore call for an improvement of Greene’s argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: It is well-known that disgust and morality are strongly associated. Additional studies show that guilt induction increases higher sensitivity toward disgust and that cleanness purifies conscience. Other researches have clarified that not all kinds of guilt lead to moral disgust. Only deontological guilt, but not altruistic/humanitarian guilt, induction induces the Macbeth effect. It has also been showed that those who perceive themselves as in a higher rank in the Social Cognitive Chain of Being (SCCB) feel less restrained from deontological rules (Not play God, NpD) and tends to intervene more in high responsibility situations, as observed in the moral dilemma paradigm. The opposite has been observed in those who perceive themselves as lower in the SCCB. In line with this evidence, deontological guilt induction, but not altruistic one, intervenes in lowering the perception of the self in the SCCB, leading to higher sensitivity towards the NpG. This in turn fosters omission kind of choices within moral dilemmas (i.e., the trolley). If there is a link between morality and disgust, then we expect that disgust induction should lead towards omission choices, as observed when deontological guilt is induced. According to this premise we induced disgust emotion in a sample of healthy volunteers, suggesting that this specific emotional activation would foster omission, rather than active, choices, within moral dilemmas. We expect the opposite effect if a sense of pride is induced. Methods: A group of healthy volunteers underwent moral and neutral dilemmas. Previously, one half of participants were confronted with disgust-inducing scenario, while the other half was confronted with a sense of pride induction. Results: In line with our hypothesis, each scenario induced the expected emotion (disgust vs pride). Further, participants feeling disgusted reported significantly more omission choices within the moral dilemmas, while the opposite effect was detected in the pride-induction group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated whether and to what extent ideological attitudes relate to moral reasoning. Specifically, in three studies we tested if Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) are associated with a general tendency to make either utilitarian (outcome-based) or deontological (principle-based) decisions in classic trolley-type moral dilemmas. The first study uncovered that both high RWA and high SDO individuals made more utilitarian versus deontological judgments in trolley dilemmas. A second study, using a process dissociation approach, revealed that this increased relative proportion of utilitarian judgments among high RWA and SDO scorers was guided by a decreased preference for the deontological option, rather than an increased preference for the utilitarian option. Finally, a third study using the RWA3D scale showed that especially the ‘Authoritarian Aggression’ facet scale is related to the decreased preference for the deontological option in high RWA individuals. Overall, these studies provide convergent evidence for substantial differences in moral reasoning tendencies based on ideological attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several factors have been put forward to explain the variability of moral judgments for superficially analogous moral dilemmas, in particular in the paradigm of trolley cases. In this paper we elaborate on Mikhail's view that (i) causal analysis is at the core of moral judgments and that (ii) causal judgments can be quantified by linguistic methods. According to this model, our moral judgments depend both on utilitarian considerations (whether positive effects outweigh negative effects) and on a representation of the causal structure of the action (whether the negative effects are essentially side-effects rather than main goals). However, the exact contribution of each factor, as well as the precise way in which causal considerations interact with utilitarian considerations, has yet to be quantified and investigated. We present several variations on trolley dilemmas in which subjects had to assess the morality of the action and to evaluate their preference between two competing descriptions of the scene (“acaused the death ofm, thereby savingn” versus “asavedn, thereby causing the death ofm”). Our main finding is that moral judgments are highly correlated with causal judgments in terms of such descriptions, which makes it possible to predict the former from the latter. Furthermore, we observe that the effect of causal judgments on the relative permissibility of actions is felt even inanti-utilitarianscenarios, namely scenarios for which the proposed action diminishes aggregate utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining moral intuitions is one of the hot topics of recent cognitive science. In the present article we focus on a factor that attracted surprisingly little attention so far, namely the temporal order in which moral scenarios are presented. We argue that previous research points to a systematic pattern of order effects that has been overlooked until now: only judgments of actions that are normally regarded as morally acceptable are susceptible to be affected by the order of presentation, and this in turn is only the case if the dilemma is immediately preceded by a dilemma in which the proposed action was considered as not morally acceptable. We conducted an experiment that largely confirmed this pattern and allowed us to analyze by what individual level responses it was generated. We argue that investigating order effects is necessary for approaching a complete descriptive moral theory. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of these findings for moral philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A set of moral problems known as The Trolley Dilemmas was presented to 3000 randomly selected inhabitants of the USA, Russia and China. It is shown that Chinese are significantly less prone to support utility-maximizing alternatives, as compared to the US and Russian respondents. A number of possible explanations, as well as methodological issues pertaining to the field of surveying moral judgment and moral disagreement, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When are sacrificial harms morally appropriate? Traditionally, research within moral psychology has investigated this issue by asking participants to render moral judgments on batteries of single-shot, sacrificial dilemmas. Each of these dilemmas has its own set of targets and describes a situation independent from those described in the other dilemmas. Every decision that participants are asked to make thus takes place within its own, separate moral universe. As a result, people's moral judgments can only be influenced by what happens within that specific dilemma situation. This research methodology ignores that moral judgments are interdependent and that people might try to balance multiple moral concerns across multiple decisions. In the present series of studies we present participants with iterative versions of sacrificial dilemmas that involve the same set of targets across multiple iterations. Using this novel approach, and across five preregistered studies (total n = 1890), we provide clear evidence that a) responding to dilemmas in a sequential, iterative manner impacts the type of moral judgments that participants favor and b) that participants' moral judgments are not only motivated by the desire to refrain from harming others (usually labelled as deontological judgment), or a desire to minimize harms (utilitarian judgment), but also by a desire to spread out harm across all possible targets. • Research on sacrificial harm usually asks participants to judge single-shot dilemmas. • We investigate sacrificial moral dilemma judgment in an iterative context. • Sequential decision making impacts moral preferences. • Many participants express a non-utilitarian concern for the overall spread of harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have used "sacrificial" trolley-type dilemmas (where harmful actions promote the greater good) to model competing influences on moral judgment: affective reactions to causing harm that motivate characteristically deontological judgments ("the ends don't justify the means") and deliberate cost-benefit reasoning that motivates characteristically utilitarian judgments ("better to save more lives"). Recently, Kahane, Everett, Earp, Farias, and Savulescu (2015) argued that sacrificial judgments reflect antisociality rather than "genuine utilitarianism," but this work employs a different definition of "utilitarian judgment." We introduce a five-level taxonomy of "utilitarian judgment" and clarify our longstanding usage, according to which judgments are "utilitarian" simply because they favor the greater good, regardless of judges' motivations or philosophical commitments. Moreover, we present seven studies revisiting Kahane and colleagues' empirical claims. Studies 1a-1b demonstrate that dilemma judgments indeed relate to utilitarian philosophy, as philosophers identifying as utilitarian/consequentialist were especially likely to endorse utilitarian sacrifices. Studies 2-6 replicate, clarify, and extend Kahane and colleagues' findings using process dissociation to independently assess deontological and utilitarian response tendencies in lay people. Using conventional analyses that treat deontological and utilitarian responses as diametric opposites, we replicate many of Kahane and colleagues' key findings. However, process dissociation reveals that antisociality predicts reduced deontological inclinations, not increased utilitarian inclinations. Critically, we provide evidence that lay people's sacrificial utilitarian judgments also reflect moral concerns about minimizing harm. This work clarifies the conceptual and empirical links between moral philosophy and moral psychology and indicates that sacrificial utilitarian judgments reflect genuine moral concern, in both philosophers and ordinary people., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)