The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

“…On a pessimistic note, our results may indicate aberrant socialization in recent cohorts: Utilitarian judgment has been shown to correlate with Machiavellian and psychopathic traits (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011), and also with the reduced capacity to distinguish felt emotions (Patil & Silani, 2014). At the same time, leading theories credit highly-acclaimed instances of moral progress to the exercise of rational scrutiny over prevailing moral norms (Greene, 2014;Singer, 2005), and the persistence of parochialism and prejudice to the unbridled command of intuition (Bloom, 2017).…”

“…Second, from a dual-process perspective, utilitarian moral judgments are often construed as the product of a cognitive suppression of affective reactions (Conway & Gawronski, 2013;Cushman, 2013;Greene, 2007; but see Bartels & Pizarro, 2011). So, growing endorsement of utilitarian sacrifice may be due, not exclusively to a reduction in the intensity of affect, but also in its relative influence upon moral judgment.…”

Impaired Decoding of Fear and Disgust Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment in Alcohol-Dependent Individuals

“…Our regression models also directly investigated any influence of education, with the psychological variables entered after education. We think that the correlation with alcohol consumption reflects a consequence of alcoholism, but other explanations are possible, and future work should explore alternative premorbid factors including, especially, psychopathic traits (Bartels and Pizarro, 2011;Harenski et al, 2009) or altered attentional control (Van Dillen et al, 2012), which may also partially account for these findings. In sum, our study not only replicates the association between alcohol dependence and utilitarian moral judgment but also reveals that defective fear and disgust decoding are key predictors of utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas.…”

“…Induction of negative emotional states, such as disgust, has also been shown to reduce utilitarian bias choice in healthy individuals (Harle and Sanfey, 2010;Schnall et al, 2008;Ugazio et al, 2012), while patients with focal damage to brain regions that support emotional responding tend to endorse utilitarian moral judgments to a greater extent (Koenigs et al, 2007;Moretto et al, 2010). Moreover, depression and anxiety levels in non-clinical samples are positively also associated with utilitarian choice (Bartels and Pizarro, 2011;Starcke et al, 2011;Youssef et al, 2012). Notably, alcohol-dependent patients exhibit depression and anxiety (Lai et al, 2012), impulse control problems (Mitchell et al, 2005;Stephens and Duka, 2008), poor emotion regulation, and emotional expression recognition (Foisy et al, 2007;Uekermann and Daum, 2008).…”

“…For example, studies have identified traits associated with impaired moral cognition, including antisociality and impulsivity (Bartels and Pizarro, 2011;Marsh et al, 2011). Induction of negative emotional states, such as disgust, has also been shown to reduce utilitarian bias choice in healthy individuals (Harle and Sanfey, 2010;Schnall et al, 2008;Ugazio et al, 2012), while patients with focal damage to brain regions that support emotional responding tend to endorse utilitarian moral judgments to a greater extent (Koenigs et al, 2007;Moretto et al, 2010).…”