Wait, did I do that? Effects of previous decisions on moral decision‐making

Abstract

Previous studies have investigated moral decision-making by using moral dilemmas that involve a single decision. This article extends this paradigm, introducing twostage scenarios to examine how moral decision-making is influenced by previous decisions in the same narrative-especially whether people tend to stay consistent or to reconsider within a morally challenging situation. It further compares decisionmaking between two-stage and one-stage scenarios. In Study 1 (N = 239), participants read scenarios requiring two successive decisions of harming one person to spare multiple people (utilitarian action), or vice versa (deontological action), within the same narrative. Second decisions were mostly found to be consistent with first decisions. Remarkably, inconsistent responding (switching) was robustly observed in about 29% of cases. Study 2 (N = 63), using one-stage scenarios, showed that having made a previous decision in the same narrative generally decreased utilitarian responding. Potential explanations for these phenomena are discussed. The present article concludes that prior choices within the same setting significantly influence decision-making. It also reveals the potential of gaining new insights using multiplestage scenarios in moral decision-making research.

Moral Observer-Licensing in Cyberspace

“…Our findings further suggest that the moral credit provided by a prior good deed might be greater than the moral debt brought about by a prior bad deed when compared with the control condition where the prior moral history was unknown. In other words, switching behaviors from good to bad might result in forgiveness to a greater degree than the amount of punishment from consecutive bad behaviors [53]. It would be interesting to verify this observation in future research.…”