Can adults make fair moral
judgments when individuals with whom they have different relationships are
involved? The present study explored the fairness of adults’ relationship-based
moral judgments in two respects by performing three experiments involving 999
participants. In Experiment 1, 65 adults were asked to decide whether to harm a
specific person to save five strangers in the footbridge and trolley dilemmas
in a within-subject design. The lone potential victim was a relative, a best
friend, a person they disliked, a criminal or a stranger. Adults’ genetic
relatedness to, familiarity with and affective relatedness to the lone
potential victims varied.
The results indicated that adults made different
moral judgments involving the lone potential victims with whom they had
different relationships. In Experiment 2, 306 adults responded to the
footbridge and trolley dilemmas involving five types of lone potential victims
in a within-subject design, and the extent to which they were familiar with and
affectively related to the lone potential victim was measured.
The results
generally replicated those of Experiment 1. In addition, for close individuals,
adults’ moral judgments were less deontological relative to their familiarity
with or positive affect toward these individuals. For individuals they were not
close to, adults made deontological choices to a larger extent relative to
their unfamiliarity with or negative affect toward these individuals.
Moreover,
for familiar individuals, the extent to which adults made deontological moral
judgments more closely approximated the extent to which they were familiar with
the individual. The adults’ deontological moral judgments involving unfamiliar
individuals more closely approximated their affective relatedness to the
individuals.
In Experiment 3, 628 adults were asked to make moral judgments
with the type of lone potential victim as the between-subject variable. The
results generally replicated those of the previous two experiments.
Therefore,
the present study shows that, in addition to apparent unfairness, latent
fairness exists in adults’ relationship-based moral judgments. Moral judgments
involving individuals with whom adults have different relationships have
different cognitive and affective bases.
Below: Percentages of participants who decided to harm a lone potential victim to save five strangers from being hurt in Experiment 1
Full article at: http://goo.gl/568FgE
By:
1Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and
Cognition, Department of Psychology, College of Education, Capital Normal
University, Beijing, China
2Youth Work Department, China Youth
University of Political Studies, Beijing, China
3Psychological Education and Counseling
Center, Office of Student Affairs, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics,
Kunming, China
Edited by: Shira Elqayam, De Montfort University, UK
Reviewed by: Briony D. Pulford, University of
Leicester, UK; Bastien Trémolière, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières,
Canada
*Correspondence: Yanchun Liu, moc.361@4891_nuhcnayuil
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