Do social classes differ in moral judgment? Previous research showed that upper-class actors have a greater inclination toward utilitarian judgments than lower-class actors and that this relationship is mediated by empathic concern. In this paper, we take a closer look at class-based differences in moral judgment and use the psychometric technique of process dissociation to measure utilitarian and deontological decision inclinations as independent and orthogonal concepts. We find that upper-class actors do indeed have a greater inclination toward decisions consistent with utilitarian principles, albeit only to a quite small extent. Class-related differences are more pronounced with respect to deontological judgments, in so far as upper-class actors are less inclined to judgments consistent with deontological principles than lower-class actors. In addition, it is shown that class-based differences in utilitarian judgments are mediated by cognitive styles and not so much by empathic concern or moral identity. None of these potential mediators explains class-based differences in the inclination toward deontological judgments.
We present evidence from choice experiments on hypothetical triage decisions in a pandemic. Respondents have to decide who out of two patients gets ventilation. Patients are described in terms of attributes such as short-term survival chance, long-term life expectancy, and their current ventilation status. Attributes are derived from the ethical discourse among experts regarding triage guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and differ in the extent to which they are salient from a utilitarian or deontological perspective. Empirically, we find that although nonexperts agree with experts in prioritizing utilitarian attributes in triage decisions, nonexperts also consider the adherence to the norm of wearing face masks as particularly relevant. Furthermore, our study supports Greene and colleagues' dual-process model of moral judgment; we find that utilitarian attributes are more decisive for respondents with a greater inclination toward utilitarianism and for respondents with a greater tendency toward reflection.
COVID-19 , Humans , Triage , Pandemics , Morals , Ethical Theory
An experimental CATI-survey (N=2041), asking sensitive questions about xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Germany, was conducted to compare the randomized response technique (RRT) and the direct questioning technique. Unlike the vast majority of RRT surveys measuring the prevalence of socially undesirable behaviors, only few studies have explored the effectiveness of the RRT with respect to the disclosure of socially undesirable opinions. Results suggest that the RRT is an effective method eliciting more socially undesirable opinions and yielding more valid prevalence estimates of xenophobia and anti-Semitism than direct questioning ('more-is-better' assumption). Furthermore, the results indicate that with increasing topic sensitivity, the benefits of using the RRT also increase. Finally, adapted logistic regression analyses show that several covariates such as education and generalized trust are related to the likelihood of being prejudiced towards foreigners and Jews.
