Sacrificing Oneself or Another: The Difference Between Prescriptive and Normative Judgments in Moral Evaluation.

When asked whether to sacrifice oneself or another person to save others, one might think that people would consider sacrificing themselves rather than someone else as the right and appropriate course of action-thus showing an other-serving bias. So far however, most studies found instances of a self-serving bias-people say they would rather sacrifice others. In three experiments using trolley-like dilemmas, we tested whether an other-serving bias might appear as a function of judgment type. That is, participants were asked to make a prescriptive judgment (whether the described action should or should not be done) or a normative judgment (whether the action is right or wrong). We found that participants exhibited an other-serving bias only when asked whether self- or other-sacrifice is wrong. That is, when the judgment was normative and in a negative frame (in contrast to the positive frame asking whether the sacrifice is right). Otherwise, participants tended to exhibit a self-serving bias; that is, they approved sacrificing others more. The results underscore the importance of question wording and suggest that some effects on moral judgment might depend on the type of judgment.

Young Children Respond to Moral Dilemmas Like Their Mothers.

There is a large scientific interest in human moral judgments. However, little is known about the developmental origins and the specific role of the primary caregivers in the early development of inter-individual differences in human morality. Here, we assess the moral intuitions of 3- to 6-year-old children and their mothers (N = 56), using child-friendly versions of five trolley dilemmas and two control scenarios. We found that children responded to moral dilemmas similar to their mothers, revealed by correlations between the responses of mothers and their children in all five moral dilemmas and a highly similar overall response pattern between mother and child across all judgments. This was revealed by a high agreement in the response pattern of children and their mothers. Furthermore, children's overall response tendencies were similar to the response tendencies of adults. Thus, similar moral principles (e.g., the Doctrine of the Double Effect) which have been identified in adults, and describes as a universal moral grammar, may guide the moral intuitions in early childhood already. Taken together, the present findings provide the first evidence that children's moral intuitions are closely associated with the moral intuitions of their mother.

Deontological guilt and obsessive compulsive disorder.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The emotion of guilt plays a pivotal role in the genesis and maintenance of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). But what kind of guilt do OC patients want to prevent? Several studies suggest the existence of two different types of guilt emotions, namely deontological and altruistic guilt. This research suggests that the former, more than the latter, is involved in OCD. Studies in which people must hypothetically choose between killing one person to save a few (consequentialist choice) or take no action and allow things to take their course (omission choice), have found that the latter is consistent with the "Do not play God" moral principle whereas the former is consistent with altruistic motivations. This paper is aimed at verifying whether both OC patients, with no induction, and nonclinical participants, after the induction of deontological guilt prefer omission more often than a consequentialist option. It is hypothesized that people with OCD will be motivated to avoid feeling deontological guilt and thus will be more likely to opt for omission. Similarly, nonclinical participants who receive a deontological guilt induction will also be more likely to choose omission. METHOD: In two studies participants were given seven scenarios (four moral dilemmas, three control scenarios). Twenty patients with OCD, 20 anxious controls, and 20 healthy participants took part in study 1. In study 2, we recruited 70 healthy participants who were randomly assigned to receive a deontological guilt or a control induction. RESULTS: Consistent with hypotheses, in Study 1 OC patients preferred omission, instead of the consequentialist option, moreso than did the clinical and nonclinical controls. In Study 2, the group receiving the deontological guilt induction preferred omission to a greater extent than did the altruistic group. LIMITATIONS: The present study cannot establish that the goal of preventing or neutralizing deontological guilt actually drives obsessions and compulsions. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide further evidence that people with OCD are more sensitive to deontological guilt, compared to other people. They thus contribute to improve the moral appraisal theory of OCD.

Forced-choice decision-making in modified trolley dilemma situations: a virtual reality and eye tracking study.

Based on the frameworks of dual-process theories, we examined the interplay between intuitive and controlled cognitive processes related to moral and social judgments. In a virtual reality (VR) setting we performed an experiment investigating the progression from fast, automatic decisions towards more controlled decisions over multiple trials in the context of a sacrificing scenario. We repeatedly exposed participants to a modified ten-to-one version and to three one-to-one versions of the trolley dilemma in VR and varied avatar properties, such as their gender and ethnicity, and their orientation in space. We also investigated the influence of arousing music on decisions. Our experiment replicated the behavioral pattern observed in studies using text versions of the trolley dilemma, thereby validating the use of virtual environments in research on moral judgments. Additionally, we found a general tendency towards sacrificing male individuals which correlated with socially desirable responding. As indicated by differences in response times, the ten-to-one version of the trolley dilemma seems to be faster to decide than decisions requiring comparisons based on specific avatar properties as a result of differing moral content. Building upon research on music-based emotion induction, we used music to induce emotional arousal on a physiological level as measured by pupil diameter. We found a specific temporal signature displaying a peak in arousal around the moment of decision. This signature occurs independently of the overall arousal level. Furthermore, we found context-dependent gaze durations during sacrificing decisions, leading participants to look prolonged at their victim if they had to choose between avatars differing in gender. Our study confirmed that moral decisions can be explained within the framework of dual-process theories and shows that pupillometric measurements are a promising tool for investigating affective responses in dilemma situations.