The motivated use of moral principles
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2009, Vol 4, Issue 6
Abstract
Five studies demonstrated that people selectively use general moral principles to rationalize preferred moral conclusions. In Studies 1a and 1b, college students and community respondents were presented with variations on a traditional moral scenario that asked whether it was permissible to sacrifice one innocent man in order to save a greater number of people. Political liberals, but not relatively more conservative participants, were more likely to endorse consequentialism when the victim had a stereotypically White American name than when the victim had a stereotypically Black American name. Study 2 found evidence suggesting participants believe that the moral principles they are endorsing are general in nature: when presented sequentially with both versions of the scenario, liberals again showed a bias in their judgments to the initial scenario, but demonstrated consistency thereafter. Study 3 found conservatives were more likely to endorse the unintended killing of innocent civilians when Iraqis civilians were killed than when Americans civilians were killed, while liberals showed no significant effect. In Study 4, participants primed with patriotism were more likely to endorse consequentialism when Iraqi civilians were killed by American forces than were participants primed with multiculturalism. However, this was not the case when American civilians were killed by Iraqi forces. Implications for the role of reason in moral judgment are discussed.
Authors and Affiliations
Eric Luis Uhlmann, David A. Pizarro, David Tannenbaum, and Peter H. Ditto
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP677704
- DOI -
- Views 149
- Downloads 0
Performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test is stable across time
A widely used measure of individual propensity to utilize analytic processing is the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), a set of math problems with intuitively compelling but incorrect answers. Here, we ask whether scores...
Improving dynamic decision making through training and self-reflection
The modern business environment requires managers to make effective decisions in a dynamic and uncertain world. How can such dynamic decision making (DDM) improve? The current study investigated the effects of brief trai...
Good luck, bad luck, and ambiguity aversion
We report a series of experiments investigating the influence of feeling lucky or unlucky on people’s choice of known-risk or ambiguous options using the traditional Ellsberg Urns decision-making task. We induced a state...
How well can adolescents really judge risk? Simple, self reported risk factors out-predict teens’ self estimates of personal risk
Recent investigations of adolescents’ beliefs about risk have led to surprisingly optimistic conclusions: Teens’ self estimates of their likelihood of experiencing various life events not only correlate sensibly with rel...
The irrational hungry judge effect revisited: Simulations reveal that the magnitude of the effect is overestimated
Danziger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso (2011) analyzed legal rulings of Israeli parole boards concerning the effect of serial order in which cases are presented within ruling sessions. They found that the probability of a favo...