(How) Do You Regret Killing One to Save Five? Affective and Cognitive Regret Differ After Utilitarian and Deontological Decisions

Abstract

Sacrificial moral dilemmas, in which opting to kill one person will save multiple others, are definitionally suboptimal: Someone dies either way. Decision-makers, then, may experience regret about these decisions. Past research distinguishes affective regret, negative feelings about a decision, from cognitive regret, thoughts about how a decision might have gone differently. Classic dual-process models of moral judgment suggest that affective processing drives characteristically deontological decisions to reject outcome-maximizing harm, whereas cognitive deliberation drives characteristically utilitarian decisions to endorse outcome-maximizing harm. Consistent with this model, we found that people who made or imagined making sacrificial utilitarian judgments reliably expressed relatively more affective regret and sometimes expressed relatively less cognitive regret than those who made or imagined making deontological dilemma judgments. In other words, people who endorsed causing harm to save lives generally felt more distressed about their decision, yet less inclined to change it, than people who rejected outcome-maximizing harm.

Psychopathy and Moral-Dilemma Judgment: An Analysis Using the Four-Factor Model of Psychopathy and the CNI Model of Moral Decision-Making

“…In particular, it is possible that reduced norm adherence in the moral judgments of people with elevated psychopathic traits results from lack of remorse and reduced care for others. This idea is broadly consistent with prior research linking norm-adhering judgments to empathic concern (Körner et al, 2020) and feelings of regret (Goldstein-Greenwood et al, 2020).…”

Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)

“…Still, in the case of morality, there are a number of such theories highlighting slightly different forms of a dualprocessing distinction. Here we compare MJAC with three theories, each with a slightly different take on the dual-processing view: Greene's dual-process model (Greene, 2008(Greene, , 2016Greene et al, 2001Greene et al, , 2004; more recent, "softer" interpretations of Greene's approach (Byrd & Conway, 2019;Conway et al, 2018;Conway & Gawronski, 2013;Goldstein-Greenwood et al, 2020); and the model-based/model-free interpretation proposed by both Cushman (2013) and Crockett (2013).…”

Many Heads Are More Utilitarian Than One

“…Supporting this idea, one study showed that experiencing higher regret was negatively correlated with utilitarian choices (Szekely & Miu, 2015). Another work found that endorsing the utilitarian (vs. deontological) judgments induced more affective (rather than cognitive) regret (Goldstein-Greenwood et al, 2020). Experiencing other post-decisional negative emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, and disgust have also been reported in sacrificial moral dilemmas (Pletti et al, 2016).…”