Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions

Petrinovich, Lewis; O’Neill, Patricia

doi:10.1016/0162-3095(96)00041-6

Cited by 226 publications

(165 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…For example, an epidemic would cause 10 out of 10,000 children to die, and a vaccine that would prevent these deaths would also cause 5 out of 10,000 children to die. Many subjects oppose such a vaccine both for their own child and as a matter of policy (Ritov & Baron, 1990; similar results have been found by Asch et al, 1994;Baron, 1992;Cohen & Pauker, 1994;Meszaros et al, 1996;Petrinovich & O'Neill, 1996;Ritov & Baron, 1992, 1995and Spranca Minsk, & Baron 1991).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Protected Values and Omission Bias

Ritov

Baron

1999

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

187

138

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Protected values (PVs) are those that people think should not be traded off. Baron and Spranca (1997) proposed that such values result from rules concerning actions (as opposed to values for outcomes). This proposal implies that PVs should show a particularly large bias against harmful acts that undermine the value in question, as opposed to harmful omissions (omission bias). We found this correlation between PVs and omission bias in 3 experiments, using stimuli of the sort that we used before to demonstrate omission bias. In 2 experiments, we also found a weak tendency for PVs to be associated with lack of concern for the number of acts involved, which is analogous to earlier results showing an association with lack of concern for the quantity of outcomes. Finally, 1 experiment showed that some people are willing to sacrifice values to prevent losses more than they are willing to sacrifice these values for gains. ᭧

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Protected Values and Omission Bias

Ritov

Baron

1999

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

187

138

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“…In other studies where moral decisions have been influenced this has typically been achieved through framing effects or affective manipulations (4)(5)(6)9). By contrast, we held the inputs to the choice constant and influenced it by measuring concurrent gaze position.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…morality | decision making | eye tracking | visual attention | dynamical systems M oral cognition arises from the interplay between emotion and reason (1)(2)(3)(4)(5), between cultural and personal values (6), and in the competition between different cognitive representations (7)(8)(9). Many studies have explored these tensions, finding that moral decisions can be influenced by priming, highlighting, or framing one factor over another (4)(5)(6)9). Despite this, almost no attention has been devoted to how moral deliberation is played out in the very moment of choice or what effect this might have on the decision process itself.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biasing moral decisions by exploiting the dynamics of eye gaze

Pärnamets

Johansson

Häll

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

158

160

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Eye gaze is a window onto cognitive processing in tasks such as spatial memory, linguistic processing, and decision making. We present evidence that information derived from eye gaze can be used to change the course of individuals' decisions, even when they are reasoning about high-level, moral issues. Previous studies have shown that when an experimenter actively controls what an individual sees the experimenter can affect simple decisions with alternatives of almost equal valence. Here we show that if an experimenter passively knows when individuals move their eyes the experimenter can change complex moral decisions. This causal effect is achieved by simply adjusting the timing of the decisions. We monitored participants' eye movements during a two-alternative forced-choice task with moral questions. One option was randomly predetermined as a target. At the moment participants had fixated the target option for a set amount of time we terminated their deliberation and prompted them to choose between the two alternatives. Although participants were unaware of this gaze-contingent manipulation, their choices were systematically biased toward the target option. We conclude that even abstract moral cognition is partly constituted by interactions with the immediate environment and is likely supported by gaze-dependent decision processes. By tracking the interplay between individuals, their sensorimotor systems, and the environment, we can influence the outcome of a decision without directly manipulating the content of the information available to them. (6), and in the competition between different cognitive representations (7-9). Many studies have explored these tensions, finding that moral decisions can be influenced by priming, highlighting, or framing one factor over another (4-6, 9). Despite this, almost no attention has been devoted to how moral deliberation is played out in the very moment of choice or what effect this might have on the decision process itself. In the current experiments we focused on the temporal dynamics of moral cognition. We hypothesized that tracking the gaze of participants while they decided between two options would provide sufficient knowledge that could be exploited to influence the outcome of the moral deliberation.Our hypothesis is derived from an understanding of human cognition that emphasizes dynamic interaction between cognition and environment through sensorimotor activation, a position supported by converging lines of evidence (10-31). Gaze patterns in humans reflect the course of reasoning during spatial indexing tasks both in adults (10, 11) and in infants (12). Evidence from neural stimulation shows that saccadic programming and perceptual decisions develop together in the monkey brain (15,16). In decision tasks, before asserting their preference for faces or similarly valued snack foods people look more toward the alternative they are going to choose (17,19). For example, the attentional driftdiffusion model (aDDM) proposes a computational mechanism underlying choice whe...

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“…Although we originally expected the effect to be present for both judgments of wrong and right, framing effects on moral judgments have been observed before (e.g., Petrinovich & O'Neill, 1996;Pastotter et al, 2013). One possible explanation why we did not observe an other-serving bias in positively framed normative judgment could be the lack of positive deontological rules similar to those prohibiting harming others -as mentioned by Chisholm (1963), suffering harm for the benefit of others is considered praiseworthy, but not obligatory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacrificing oneself or another

Vranka¹,

Bahník²,

Efendic³

2017

Preprint

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In situations where one has the opportunity to either sacrifice oneself or another person to save a group of people, one might think that there are instances where people would rather sacrifice themselves than others -thus showing an other-serving bias. So far however, most studies found instances of a self-serving bias -people would rather sacrifice others. In this paper, we test whether an other-serving bias might appear as a function of judgment type. That is, we looked at prescriptive (should/should not) and normative (wrong/right) types of judgments separately. We found that participants exhibited an other-serving bias, but only when asked whether self-or other-sacrifice is wrong. Otherwise, participants were exhibiting a self-serving bias; that is, they approved sacrificing others more. The results underscore the importance of question wording and suggest that some effects on moral judgment might depend on the type of judgment.

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Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions

Cited by 226 publications

References 18 publications

Protected Values and Omission Bias

Protected Values and Omission Bias

Biasing moral decisions by exploiting the dynamics of eye gaze

Sacrificing oneself or another

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