Choosing between bad and worse: investigating choice in moral dilemmas through the lens of control.

Abstract

People's preferences for the utilitarian outcome in sacrificial moral dilemmas, where a larger group of individuals are saved at the cost of a few, have been argued to be influenced by various factors. Taking expected utility (EU) theory into consideration, we investigate whether the expected effectiveness of actions elucidate certain inconsistencies in moral judgments. Additionally, we also explore whether participants' role in the dilemma as the executor or a superior who merely makes a decision, which is carried out by a subordinate, influences judgments-a factor generally overlooked by classical EU models. We test these hypotheses using a modified moral dilemma paradigm with a choice between two actions, one highly successful and the other more likely to fail. Both actions are either expected to result in a favorable outcome of saving five individuals by sacrificing one or an unfavorable outcome of sacrificing five to save one. When the efficient action is anticipated to lead to a favorable outcome, in line with EU models, people almost invariably choose the efficient action. However, in conditions where the EUs associated with efficient and inefficient actions are close to each other, people's choice for favored outcome is above chance when they act as agents themselves. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of moral judgments.