Many Heads Are More Utilitarian Than One

Abstract

Moral judgments have a very prominent social nature, and in everyday life, they are continually shaped by discussions with others. Psychological investigations of these judgments, however, have rarely addressed the impact of face-to-face interaction. To examine the role of social deliberation within small groups on moral judgments, we had groups of 4 to 5 participants judge moral dilemmas first individually and privately, then collectively and interactively, and finally individually a second time. We employed both real-life and sacrificial moral dilemmas in which the character’s action or inaction violated a moral principle to benefit the greatest number of people. Participants decided if these utilitarian decisions were morally acceptable or not. We found that collectives were more utilitarian than the statistical aggregate of their members compared to both first and second individual judgments. This supports the hypothesis that deliberation and consensus within a group transiently reduced the emotional burden of norm violation and indicates normative conformity in moral judgments.