Sensitivity to shifts in probability of harm and benefit in moral dilemmas

Ryazanov, Arseny A.; Wang, Shawn Tinghao; Rickless, Samuel C.; McKenzie, Craig R. M.; Nelkin, Dana Kay

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104548

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Participants do not just estimate whether the moral benefits are greater than the costs. They care about how much greater they are, counting a rights‐violation as a weighty cost (Bucciarelli, 2015; Christensen et al., 2014; Gürçay & Baron, 2017; McGuire et al., 2009; Moore et al., 2008; Rosas & Aguilar‐Pardo, 2020; Rosas, Bermúdez et al., 2019; Rosas & Koenigs, 2014; Ryazanov et al., 2021; Trémolière & Bonnefon, 2014). The weighty cost of a rights‐violation is the reason why people generally do not judge that causing deaths is permissible whenever more lives are saved.…”

Section: The Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Individual attitudes towards moral costs and benefits drive responses to moral dilemmas

Rosas

Hannikainen

Lam

et al. 2023

Euro J Social Psych

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We review some processing assumptions that underlie the currently used measures of moral judgement with moral dilemmas, contrasting them with the overlooked possibility that the primary mechanism consists in assessing a net balance of the costs versus benefits of the sacrificial action. Different dilemmas scenarios present different net balances of cost versus benefits, and participants usually change between them from disapproval to approval motivated by what appears to be a larger positive balance of moral benefits. The thresholds for such change are personal and vary. For the instrument to reliably estimate the individual differences in approval thresholds, there can be no disagreement on the facts affecting the balances and the ranking order of the items. We designed an instrument targeting three different balances with five indicators each and ran an exploratory factor analysis to prove that the different balances operate cleanly as separate factors. The expected three-factor solution and a stable ranking of the balance points were obtained across three samples from three different continents in three languages, suggesting the activation of cross-culturally stable cognitive processes. The strength ratio of utilitarian (U) to deontological (D) sensitivity was calculated for each participant and corrected using the scores of a balance-point with no net benefits. This instrument overcomes validation difficulties burdening the existing measures and offers good prospects for further development.

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Section: The Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Rosas & Koenigs, 2014;Ryazanov et al, 2021;Trémolière & Bonnefon, 2014). The weighty cost of a rights-violation is the reason why people generally do not judge that causing deaths is permissible whenever more lives are saved.…”

Section: Manipulation Of Moral Costs and Benefitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual attitudes towards moral costs and benefits drive responses to moral dilemmas

Rosas

Hannikainen

Lam

et al. 2023

Euro J Social Psych

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“…That is, decisionmakers consider the reduction in relative rather than absolute risk (e.g. Baron 1997, Ryazanov et al 2021.…”

Section: The Role Of Anticipated Regret In Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

People Behave as if they Anticipate Regret Conditional on Experiencing a Bad Outcome

Ryan

Baum²,

Evers

2021

SSRN Journal

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Decision-makers often must decide whether to invest in prospects to reduce risk. Existing models assume that decision-makers consider the absolute improvement in probabilistic chances (e.g., increasing a 10% chance of winning $10 to a 20% chance is roughly similar to increasing an 80% chance of winning $10 to a 90% chance). We present evidence that people instead behave as if they consider the relative reduction in bad outcomes (increasing a 10% chance to a 20% chance eliminates 1/9th of all bad outcomes, while increasing an 80% chance to a 90% chance eliminates 1/2 of all bad outcomes). This bias in the anticipation of preventable bad outcomes drives risk preferences that violate normative standards and results in the same individuals behaving both risk-seeking and risk-averse within the same decisionmaking task. We discuss how to adjust regret theory to accommodate these results.

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Moral judgments under uncertainty: risk, ambiguity and commission bias

Song,

Shou,

Olney

et al. 2023

Curr Psychol

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Previous research on moral dilemmas has mainly focused on decisions made under conditions of probabilistic certainty. We investigated the impact of uncertainty on the preference for action (killing one individual to save five people) and inaction (saving one but allowing five people to die) in moral dilemmas. We reported two experimental studies that varied the framing (gain vs loss), levels of risk (probability of gain and loss) and levels of ambiguity (imprecise probability information) in the choice to save five individuals by sacrificing one. We found that participants preferred actions with uncertainty (risk/ambiguity) over inaction. Specifically, we found that participants preferred actions with precise probability information (risk) over inaction, and they preferred actions with modest or high levels of ambiguity over actions with precise probabilities, especially when moral dilemmas had a loss frame. We also observed commission bias in Study 2. We discussed the implications for research in moral decision-making.

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Sensitivity to shifts in probability of harm and benefit in moral dilemmas

Cited by 8 publications

References 28 publications

Individual attitudes towards moral costs and benefits drive responses to moral dilemmas

Individual attitudes towards moral costs and benefits drive responses to moral dilemmas

People Behave as if they Anticipate Regret Conditional on Experiencing a Bad Outcome

Moral judgments under uncertainty: risk, ambiguity and commission bias

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