Psychology Chapter on Moral Dilemmas

Task 6 - Gut-wrenching: Affect and Cognition

• Trolley Problem: A moral dilemma requiring a choice between saving 5 lives at the cost of 1. 90% of people choose to divert the trolley.
• Footbridge Problem: A personal moral dilemma where one must choose to push a person to save 5 others. Only 10% of people choose this.
• Deontological Judgments: Based on moral rules/obligations. More common in the footbridge problem, often using the affective system (fast, automatic decisions)
• Utilitarian Judgments: Based on the practical/pragmatic consequences. More common in the trolley problem, often using the cognitive system (slower, more considered decisions).
• DLPFC (Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex): Associated with the cognitive system, linked to utilitarian judgments. Inhibiting this area reduces utilitarian judgments in emotionally intense moral dilemmas.
• VMPFC (Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex): Associated with the affective system, linked to emotional generation and deontological judgments. Damage is linked to increased utilitarian judgements.
• Antisocial/Psychopathic Individuals: More likely to make utilitarian judgments, especially in personal dilemmas. This links to a reduction in deontological inclinations, rather than increased utilitarian inclinations.
• CNI Model: Suggests that moral judgments can be resolved by considering consequences (C), moral norms (N), and preference for inaction (I). Individuals high in psychopathy show a preference for action but less sensitivity to consequences and moral norms.
• Moral Judgement Complexity: Real-life dilemmas may not parallel hypothetical dilemmas like trolley problems.

Beyond WEIRD Morality

• WEIRD Participants: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic participants, show a tendency towards an ethic of autonomy.
• Moral Foundations:
  • Autonomy: Individuals are autonomous and have their own rights/needs.
  • Community: People are members of groups that need protection.
  • Divinity: Human actions impact spiritual and divine order (e.g. sanctity).
• Moral Themes in WEIRD Cultures: Narrower and more focused on autonomy-related moral issues (e.g. harm, fairness).
• Moral Judgement and Culture: Moral considerations are varied and depend on contextual norms. This is more evident in different cultures.

Chinese Morality

• Virtue Ethics: Chinese morality emphasizes virtuous character, appropriate behavior, and etiquette.
• Harmfulness vs. Incivility: Westerners tend to consider harming others as a primary immoral factor, whereas Chinese tend to label uncivilized behaviors as immoral.
• Civility: An important component of Chinese morality and its emphasis on cultural appropriateness.
• Moral Judgment Prototype: People judge behaviors by their similarity to pre-existing prototypes of immoral acts, rather than a universal standard.
• Cultural Differences in Categorizing Immoral Actions: Westerners perceive harmful behaviors as more immoral than uncivilized behaviors among Chinese.

Moral Identity and Binding Moral Foundations

• Moral Identity: A self-schema centered on moral values and traits. People with a strong moral identity often consider those outside their in-group (out-group members) in their moral judgment.
• Binding Moral Foundations: Loyalty, authority, and purity strongly impact moral reasoning, though a strong moral identity can mitigate their impact, even when considering people external to the immediate in-group.
• Cultural Considerations: Moral reasoning may rely on different prototypes for morality (e.g., harmful vs. uncivilized) depending on culture.