In a moral dilemma, choose the one you love: Impartial actors are seen as less moral than partial ones

Abstract

Although impartiality and concern for the greater good are lauded by utilitarian philosophies, it was predicted that when values conflict, those who acted impartially rather than partially would be viewed as less moral. Across four studies, using life-or-death scenarios and more mundane ones, support for the idea that relationship obligations are important in moral attribution was found. In Studies 1-3, participants rated an impartial actor as less morally good and his or her action as less moral compared to a partial actor. Experimental and correlational evidence showed the effect was driven by inferences about an actor's capacity for empathy and compassion. In Study 4, the relationship obligation hypothesis was refined. The data suggested that violations of relationship obligations are perceived as moral as long as strong alternative justifications sanction them. Discussion centres on the importance of relationships in understanding moral attributions.

The costs of being consequentialist: Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence

“…Although important work on this topic has been conducted without measuring behaviour (e.g. Hughes, 2017;Rom et al, 2017;Uhlmann et al, 2013), we think it is important to establish whether participants would actually be willing to 'put their money where their mouth is' and -like for the sacrificial dilemmas (Everett et al, 2016) -trust a non-consequentialist in the impartiality dilemmas with their money more than they do a consequentialist. Second, and relatedly, here we focused on ratings of hypothetical actors in moral dilemmas, but it is possible that results would be weaker when participants were thinking about (ostensibly) real other participants, not just judging a hypothetical protagonist.…”

“…Our primary measure of interest, like other recent studies (e.g. Hughes, 2017;Rom et al, 2017), was how the protagonist in the story was perceived depending on her Everett, Faber, Savulescu, and Crockett (In Press) Journal of Experimental Social Psychology decision, regardless of the judgment the participant themselves made about the dilemma.…”

The costs of being consequentialist: Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence

“…Our primary measure of interest, like other recent studies (e.g. Hughes, 2017 ; Rom et al, 2017 ), was how the protagonist in the story was perceived depending on her decision, regardless of the judgment the participant themselves made about the dilemma. One source of variance that has not been controlled for in these previous studies, however, is participants' own moral judgments.…”

“…Although important work on this topic has been conducted without measuring behaviour (e.g. Hughes, 2017 ; Rom et al, 2017 ; Uhlmann et al, 2013 ), we think it is important to establish whether participants would actually be willing to ‘put their money where their mouth is’ and - like for the sacrificial dilemmas ( Everett et al, 2016 ) - trust a non-consequentialist in the impartiality dilemmas with their money more than they do a consequentialist. Second, and relatedly, here we focused on ratings of hypothetical actors in moral dilemmas, but it is possible that results would be weaker when participants were thinking about (ostensibly) real other participants, not just judging a hypothetical protagonist.…”

The Universality of Moral Requirements and Duties to Close Persons

“…В случае всех трех дилемм помощь близким людям и спасение близких людей получили существенное преимущество как в отношении морального качества действия, так и в отношении морального качества личности (одним из неоправдавшихся предположений Дж. Хьюз было как раз ожидание того, что высокая оценка личности, проявляющей пристрастность к близким, будет сопровождаться менее высокой оценкой ее поступков) [Hughes 2017].…”