Efficient Kill–Save Ratios Ease Up the Cognitive Demands on Counterintuitive Moral Utilitarianism

Abstract

The dual-process model of moral judgment postulates that utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas (e.g., accepting to kill one to save five) are demanding of cognitive resources. Here we show that utilitarian responses can become effortless, even when they involve to kill someone, as long as the kill-save ratio is efficient (e.g., 1 is killed to save 500). In Experiment 1, participants responded to moral dilemmas featuring different kill-save ratios under high or low cognitive load. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants responded at their own pace or under time pressure. Efficient kill-save ratios promoted utilitarian responding and neutered the effect of load or time pressure. We discuss whether this effect is more easily explained by a parallel-activation model or by a default-interventionist model.

Reduced empathic concern leads to utilitarian moral judgments in trait alexithymia

“…Another drawback of the study is the limited number of moral dilemmas used, although this is not an unusual practice (e.g., Mendez et al, 2005; Gleichgerrcht et al, 2011, 2013; McIlwain et al, 2012; Trémolière et al, 2012; Gleichgerrcht and Young, 2013; Jack et al, 2014; Trémolière and Bonnefon, 2014). …”

“…Disrupting cognitive processing by imposing cognitive load or by using noninvasive brain stimulation technique makes participants either slow down while endorsing utilitarian solutions (Greene et al, 2008) or makes it less likely that they will endorse utilitarian solutions (Trémolière et al, 2012; Conway and Gawronski, 2013; Jeurissen et al, 2014; but see Tassy et al, 2012). Easing up cognitive demands by using efficient kill-save ratios makes people more utilitarian (Trémolière and Bonnefon, 2014). Cognitively exhausting participants using sleep deprivation also increases response latencies while providing utilitarian moral judgments (Killgore et al, 2007; Tempesta et al, 2011).…”

Gain or non‐loss: The message matching effect of regulatory focus on moral judgements of other‐orientation lies

“…These results suggested that outcomes might be more important than methods for moral judgements of other‐orientation lies. In addition, previous studies found that people would judge a behaviour to be more moral as the value of its outcome increases (Trémolière & Bonnefon, ). Therefore, if individuals perceived the outcome of an other‐orientation lie to be more important and valuable, they are more likely to judge the lie to be more moral.…”

Intuition and Moral Decision-Making – The Effect of Time Pressure and Cognitive Load on Moral Judgment and Altruistic Behavior

“…Greene et al [22] argue that these results provide evidence in support of their hypothesized asymmetry between utilitarian and deontological moral judgments, with the former driven by relatively more analytical thinking and the latter by relatively more intuitive thinking. Later studies [23–25] have reported more direct evidence in support of a sequential dual process model, showing that putting subjects under cognitive load decreases utilitarian moral judgments. Moreover, Paxton et al [17] showed that subjects became more utilitarian when primed into reflective thinking by administering the Cognitive Reflection Task [26] prior to making the moral judgments.…”