This paper introduces a novel Payoff-Trolley dilemma task, where other participants’ payoffs were at stake on the main or sidetrack in a trolley dilemma. Different scenarios varied the number of “others’ payoffs” on the sidetrack and main track in ways that helped identify more clearly immoral choices of commission and omission, and utilitarian choices. Study participants had also made hypothetical Trolley dilemma choices in a separate study 4-5 years prior, allowing for a direct comparison of hypothetical and consequential moral dilemma choices. One key finding is that past hypothetical choices are statistically significant predictors of present consequential choices in the Payoff-Trolley task. Also, we find that one’s degree of cognitive reflection is the most robust person-specific characteristic that predicts choices—higher cognitive reflection predicts more utilitarian choices, a reduced likelihood of immoral acts of commission and omission, and it impacts one’s sensitivity to immoral choices for a given level of net-harm present in the scenario. These results hope to bridge a gap in our understanding of how choices in hypothetical moral dilemmas inform behaviors in consequential moral dilemmas.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.