Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment

Abstract

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person's life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent's intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively "direct" or "personal". Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent's muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people's real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas.

The means/side-effect distinction in moral cognition: A meta-analysis

“…Our results are consistent with various studies contained within the meta-analysis itself, including those that report a pure means/byproduct effect (e.g. Cushman et al 2006) and those that report an interaction with personal contact (Greene et al 2009). However, as we'll later discuss, the exact theoretical upshot of this state of affairs is important and as yet unresolved.…”

“…pushing or bumping) in the means condition but not in the byproduct condition. We decided to focus only on the broad and intuitive notion of contact rather than related categories that are more fine-grained and theory-driven, such as personal force (Greene et al 2009), prototypically violent acts (Greene 2013), and battery (Mikhail 2014). …”

“…First, some of these studies appear to have confounds, conjoining harming as a means with other factors relevant to moral cognition, including contact, commission, battery, and personal force (Greene et al 2009;May 2014;Mikhail 2014). Consider, for example, what is arguably the most famous pair of cases in this literature: Switch and Footbridge.…”

“…Here, the actor can promote the greater good by killing not only as a means but in a violent way that requires up-close and personal contact with the victim. And some experiments suggest an important interaction effect between harming as a means and using personal force (Greene et al 2009).…”

“…At least for vignettes that don't appear to involve confounds, there have been some failures to replicate the means/byproduct effect (e.g. Waldmann & Dieterich 2007;Greene et al 2009;Zimmerman 2013;May ms-a). For example, while the proportion of permissibility judgments tends to go down when death is brought about as a means (Loop) rather than a mere side-effect (Man-in-Front), two subsequent studies using this same categorical measure have found that participants are inclined to think it's permissible to sacrifice the one for the greater good in both cases (see Table 1).…”