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

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject harming one person to save many others than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker – but still evident – preferences in the domain of impartial beneficence. In the domain of instrumental harm, non-consequentialist agents were consistently viewed as more moral and trustworthy, preferred for a range of social roles, and entrusted with more money in economic exchanges. In the domain of impartial beneficence, preferences for non-consequentialist agents were observed for close interpersonal relationships requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader). Collectively our findings demonstrate that preferences for non-consequentialist agents are sensitive to the different dimensions of consequentialist thinking and the relational context.

Justice reactions to deviant ingroup members: Ingroup identity threat motivates utilitarian punishments

“…Along the same lines, it should be noted that the concept of utilitarianism in moral decisions itself has multiple facets. As outlined in the two-dimensional model of utilitarianism (Kahane et al, 2018), utilitarian decision-making involves at least two psychological dissociable and independently important aspects, namely 'instrumental harm' and 'impartial beneficence' (see also Everett et al, 2018). The symbolic exclusion of ingroup deviants might be explained through either of these two dimensions of utilitarianism (or both).…”

“…People are more likely to trust retribution (also seen as deontology‐based), which rejects harming one person for the benefit of many others, and distrust utilitarianism (also called ‘consequentialist’). However, it should be noted that utilitarianism, except of instrumental harm, includes a positive aspect as well, that is, impartial beneficence (Kahane et al ., ), through which, one should expect punishments to be free of bias or favouritism towards one's social network or personal ties (see Everett, Faber, Savulescu, & Crockett, ).…”

When and Why People Evaluate Negative Reciprocity as More Fair Than Positive Reciprocity

“…In the interpersonal realm, people thought that the favoritism demanded by positive reciprocity was fair. Indeed, people often expect and desire partiality from their friends (DeScioli & Kurzban, ; Everett et al, ; Hughes, ; Shaw et al, ).…”

“…Although most of our experiments focused on third party decision‐making, contexts in which partiality and favoritism are generally regarded as unfair, there are of course many situations, even in Western cultures, in which people are not judged harshly for being partial (e.g., as in our Study 5). People often expect loyalty and preferential treatment in interpersonal relationships, and as a result, they judge others negatively for not preferentially helping loved ones (Everett et al, ; Hughes, ) and respond negatively to neutrality from friends (Shaw et al, ). We hope that our work joins the considerable work that has been done on how people navigate these demands in different relational contexts (e.g., Fiske, ).…”

“…Study 5 investigates this hypothesis by comparing an office context where favoritism is indeed negative to a personal context where people distribute their own resources among friends. Based on previous research, we know that people react less negatively to partiality in interpersonal contexts (Everett, Faber, Savulescu, & Crockett, ; Fiske, ). Indeed, friends may expect a degree of favoritism from their friends in interpersonal interactions (Shaw et al, ).…”