A Behavioral Disinhibition Hypothesis of Interventions in Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

The present article puts forward a behavioral disinhibition hypothesis stating that, often, at least some levels of behavioral disinhibition are needed to overcome people’s inhibition to intervene in dilemmatic situations in which they have to choose between different actions with good reasons for each of the actions involved. Results reported indeed show that people to whom disinhibited behaviors were salient or people with stronger predispositions toward behavioral disinhibition were more likely to intervene in trolley and footbridge dilemmas.

Utilitarian preferences or action preferences? De-confounding action and moral code in sacrificial dilemmas

“…Without such de-confounding, it is impossible to know whether responses to these dilemmas are driven by Action-versus Moral Code-related preferences (or both). 1 An important implication of this confound is that previous research demonstrating a relationship between some predictor (e.g., emotion, reward sensitivity, or behavioral disinhibition) and sacrificial dilemmas responses (Choe & Min, 2011;Moore, Stevens, & Conway, 2011;Pastötter, Gleixner, Neuhauser, & Bäuml, 2013;Seidel & Prinz, 2012;Strohminger, Lewis, & Meyer, 2011;Valdesolo & Desteno, 2006;van den Bos, Müller, & Damen, 2011), may instead be demonstrating a relationship between that predictor and Action (i.e., willingness to endorse intervention in a situation, irrespective of the implied moral code). Critically, if Action (even partly) drives responses to sacrificial dilemmas, existing results cannot be unambiguously interpreted as reflecting psychological processes underlying the application of, or preferences for, specific Moral Codes.…”

“…A critical question following from such findings is how one ought to interpret the existing sacrificial dilemma literature. Previous research has linked factors such as reward sensitivity (Moore et al, 2011) and positive emotion (Valdesolo & Desteno, 2006) to more "utilitarian" responses. Insofar as these factors produce heightened tendency towards disinhibited (i.e., action-oriented) behavior, they may in fact be irrelevant to people's preferred moral code.…”

Reminders of behavioral disinhibition increase public conformity in the Asch paradigm and behavioral affiliation with ingroup members

“…Furthermore, the disinhibition manipulation yields effects comparable to differences on Carver and White’s (1994) measure of trait BIS (see Van den Bos et al, 2011a , b ). In addition, the manipulation does not trigger behavioral activation [no effects were found on state versions of Carver and White, 1994 , behavioral activation scales (BAS)] nor does it influence positive or negative affective states [no effects were found on the positive and negative subsets of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) by Watson et al, 1988 ; see Van den Bos et al, 2009 , 2011b ].…”

“…Thus, the reminders of behavioral disinhibition that we use in our studies have been pretested extensively. These earlier tests show that this is a manipulation that is conceptually related to the BIS as defined by Carver and White (1994 ; see also Van den Bos, 2013 ), significantly lowers state behavioral inhibition ( Van den Bos et al, 2009 ), yields comparable effects as associated individual difference variables ( Van den Bos et al, 2011a , b ), and does so without affecting alternative concepts such as behavioral activation, affective states, self-monitoring, or accountability ( Van den Bos et al, 2009 , 2011b ). What effects do these reminders of behavioral disinhibition have on conformity and affiliation with peers?…”

“…In the first part, the disinhibition manipulation took place. This manipulation used the same procedures developed and extensively pretested in earlier research (for details, see Van den Bos et al, 2009 , 2011a , b ). Specifically, participants were asked to complete a short questionnaire of three open-ended questions.…”