Utilitarian Moral Judgment Exclusively Coheres with Inference from Is to Ought

Abstract

Faced with moral choice, people either judge according to pre-existing obligations (deontological judgment), or by taking into account the consequences of their actions (utilitarian judgment). We propose that the latter coheres with a more general cognitive mechanism – deontic introduction, the tendency to infer normative (‘deontic’) conclusions from descriptive premises (is-ought inference). Participants were presented with vignettes that allowed either deontological or utilitarian choice, and asked to draw a range of deontic conclusions, as well as judge the overall moral rightness of each choice separately. We predicted and found a selective defeasibility pattern, in which manipulations that suppressed deontic introduction also suppressed utilitarian moral judgment, but had little effect on deontological moral judgment. Thus, deontic introduction coheres with utilitarian moral judgment almost exclusively. We suggest a family of norm-generating informal inferences, in which normative conclusions are drawn from descriptive (although value-laden) premises. This family includes deontic introduction and utilitarian moral judgment as well as other informal inferences. We conclude with a call for greater integration of research in moral judgment and research into deontic reasoning and informal inference.

Rational decision making in medicine: Implications for overuse and underuse

“…Fundamentally, all these initiatives expose tensions between societal vs individual interests . Interestingly, testing of the role of deontic introduction in moral inference found that the tendency to infer normative conclusions mostly coheres with utilitarian (rather than deontological) judgments, which can explain increasing outrage over ever‐increasing health care costs …”

“…92 Fundamentally, all these initiatives expose tensions between societal vs individual interests. 73 Interestingly, testing of the role of deontic introduction in moral inference found that the tendency to infer normative conclusions mostly coheres with utilitarian (rather than deontological) judgments, 86 which can explain increasing outrage over ever-increasing health care costs. 93 Another example of a goal conflict, one that all too often leads to "overtreatment" with aggressive therapy rather than a more appropriate palliative approach such as hospice, is the end-of-life setting.…”

“…We referred to the threshold model of decision making as a model that serves as a link between evidence and decision making . Recently, deontic introduction theory was developed to provide psychological mechanisms for how normative (a.k.a. “deontic”) rules for actions can be generated by linking empirical evidence to values and the transference of value from goals to actions .…”

Why People with More Emotion Regulation Difficulties Made a More Deontological Judgment: The Role of Deontological Inclinations

“…Virtual reality presentation of moral dilemmas will have more ecological validity, and will be better in predicting individuals’ behaviors ( Patil et al, 2014 ). Finally, Elqayam et al (2015 , 2017 ) proposed a processing model for deontic introduction to explain the process of moral judgment, and found deontic introduction was only related to utilitarian moral judgment. It would be interesting to explore the role of deontic introduction in the association between emotion regulation difficulties and moral judgment.…”

“…Participants face two options: to hit a switch to divert the trolley to another track, and to save the five workmen at the cost of the death of one workman on that track, or to do nothing, and to let the trolley cause the deaths of the five workmen ( Greene et al, 2004 ). The preference for the former is regarded as a utilitarian judgment ( Mill, 1861/1998 ), judging mainly on the basis of the consequences of the actions ( Elqayam et al, 2017 ), and the preference for the latter is interpreted as a deontological judgment ( Kant, 1785/1959 ), judging mainly on the basis of pre-existing obligations ( Elqayam et al, 2017 ).…”