Framing Effect in the Trolley Problem and Footbridge Dilemma

Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of dilemma type, framing, and number of saved lives on moral decision making. A total of 591 undergraduates, with a mean age of 20.56 (SD = 1.37) were randomly assigned to 12 groups on the basis of a grid of two dilemma types (the trolley problem or the footbridge dilemma) by three frames (positive, neutral, or negative frame) by two different numbers of workers (5 or 15 people). The main effects of dilemma type, frame, and number of saved workers were all significant. The interaction of dilemma type and number of saved workers and the interaction of the three independent factors were significant. Results indicated that moral judgment is affected by framing. Specifically, people were more inclined to utilitarianism in the positive or neutral frame and more inclined to intuitionism in the negative frame. Furthermore, this effect can be moderated by dilemma type and number of saved lives. Implications of our results are discussed.

Reliability of Moral Decision Making: Evidence from the Trolley Dilemma

“…Petrinovich & O'Neill (1996) found that participants were susceptible to the framing effect in the bystander scenario, and Pastötter et al (2013) showed that participants resisted the framing effect in the footbridge scenario. In line with these results, Cao et al (2017) confirmed that participants resisted framing manipulation in the 'footbridge scenario' while they were susceptible to the framing manipulation in the 'bystander scenario'. On the opposite, one study showed that participants resisted the framing manipulation in the 'bystander scenario' while they were susceptible to the framing manipulation in the 'footbridge scenario' (Broeders et al, 2011), which runs counter the aforementioned findings.…”

“…If the framing effects have been widely studied in the field of moral decision making 1 , to our knowledge, only four studies have assessed their role in standard trolley-like dilemmas 2 , with the potential to afford cues about reliability of people's moral decisions (Broeders et al, 2011;Pastötter et al, 2013;Cao et al, 2017;Petrinovich & O'Neill, 1996). Results, however, are hardly conclusive.…”

“…However, this manipulation cannot be described as pure case of attribute framing since the formulation of the problem remains unchanged (Levin et al, 1998). Cao et al (2017) and Petrinovich & O'Neill (1996) explored framing susceptibility in the trolley dilemma by presenting participants with either the positive (lives saved) or negative consequences (lives lost) of the two possible actions (pushing the man/lever or doing nothing). In other words, participants faced either a positivelyframed problem ('If you perform the action, 5 people will survive and if you do nothing, one person will survive') or a negatively-framed problem ('If you perform the action, one person will die and if you do nothing, 5 people will die').…”

Cognitive Inflexibility Predicts Extremist Attitudes

“…Moreover, we introduced here a novel means of testing conviction in self-sacrifice – by measuring participants’ confidence in their decisions to self-sacrifice in a hypothetical trolley dilemma scenario in order to save the lives of ingroup members. We hope that this will contribute to the methodological discussions surrounding the use of trolley problem dilemmas (e.g., Gold et al, 2014b, 2015; Graham et al, 2016; Cao et al, 2017) and offer a valuable means of subtly testing precursor attitudes toward extremism.…”

10D: Feasibility Study of a Novel Low-cost Brazilian Emergency Mechanical Ventilator

“…Facing the exorbitant numbers of infected persons, a question was risen: How could medical care be provided equally if the number of infected is much higher than the number of ventilators available worldwide? Which lead the physicians to a re-discussion of the trolley dilemma [8,16] or the Doctor's Dilemma of George Bernard Shaw [17]: In the eventuality of two patients with respiratory failure and only one ventilator, which patient to save [18][19][20]?…”