Does Utilitarian Judgment in Moral Dilemmas Reflect a Truly
Utilitarian Outlook?
B. Valkenburg (6064736) I BSc (Clinical) Psychology supervisor: J.W.B. Elsey, MSc I June 2017
Word count: 4864 Word count abstract: 148
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Abstract
Recent research questions if utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas reflect a truly utilitarian decision making process. This was directly investigated in 267 participants collectively over two separate studies, by assessing whether the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas was associated with psychopathic traits, and additionally whether this related to less utilitarian decisions in monetary dilemmas. The level of psychopathic traits was evaluated with the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale Short Form (SRP-SF). Evidence was found that higher psychopathic traits make the endorsement of utilitarian judgment more likely. In addition, this relationship is primarily due to Factor 1 psychopathy. Furthermore, the endorsement of utilitarian judgment was not associated with greater giving in the monetary dilemmas, which would be a utilitarian outcome. Taken together, these findings suggest that moral dilemmas does not truly reflect a utilitarian outlook and therefore argue that moral dilemmas are not a valid indicator of moral judgment.
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By focussing on how we should deal with ourselves, others and the world around us, moral standards provide a framework for the analysis of moral decision making. A growing number of theorists have adopted a strategy comparing moral judgment to utilitarianism to evaluate the quality of moral judgment (e.g., Greene et al., 2009; Kahane et al., 2015; Koenigs et al., 2012). Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory and has the underlying principle that the moral quality of a judgment is defined by its outcome. This is contrary to deontological theories, for which the moral quality is based on the judgment (MEAAI, 2011). According to classical utilitarianism the objective should always be to maximise aggregate welfare (Bentham, 1789/1961; Mill, 1861). The view of utilitarianism is characterised as an impartial perspective of morality. Utilitarianism asks us to abstract from our own interest and to extend our circle of concern, however geographically, temporally or even biologically distant (Kahane, 2015; Singer, 1979). This abstraction allows us to promote the greater good, but also makes utilitarianism a highly demanding moral view, where one must make great personal sacrifices (Kahane et al., 2015).
A utilitarian outlook endorses harmful actions that promote the greater good (Choe & Min, 2011; Greene, 2007) and judgments favouring the aggregate welfare over the welfare of fewer individuals (Choe & Min, 2011; Moll & Oliveria-Souza, 2007). A significant part of research into moral decision making focusses on moral dilemmas where one must decide whether to sacrifice one person to save a greater number. Given their sacrificial elements, moral dilemmas are also known as sacrificial dilemmas. Moral dilemmas are widely seen as
a comparison between utilitarian and deontological ethics (Kahane, 2015).1 It has been
argued that moral dilemmas offer a valuable tool in understanding the underlying psychological processes of moral judgment (Christensen & Gomila, 2012).
1 Non-utilitarian is often referred to as deontological. Such reference is strictly speaking incorrect, because
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Moral dilemmas can be divided into personal and impersonal dilemmas. Personal dilemmas involve direct, intimate physical contact, whereas impersonal dilemmas involve more indirect actions (Koenigs et al., 2012). The dilemmas have in common that there is a moral transgression (violation). The following representation of the trolley dilemma is impersonal and is similar to one of the moral dilemmas included. A runaway trolley is going to kill five people. The only way to save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate track where it will kill one person. Is it acceptable to turn the trolley in order to save five people? In contrast, the following representation of the footbridge dilemma is personal. As like the trolley dilemma, a trolley is heading to kill five people. The only possible way to save the five people is to push a stranger of a footbridge onto the tracks below. Clearly, by doing so the stranger will die. Is it acceptable to push this stranger to his death (Choe & Min, 2011)?
Moral dilemmas are not without legitimate criticism. It is questioned whether moral dilemmas are valid instruments to adequately measure moral preferences (Crone & Laham,
2014; Kahane, 2015). 2 For example, current prevailing research assumes that the
endorsement of a transgression means the rejection of a deontological rule against harming others in a direct and personal manner, and therefore an endorsement of utilitarianism. Such an assumption must be challenged, because rejecting a deontological rule does not necessarily mean the endorsement of a utilitarian rule (Bartels & Pizzarro, 2011; Kahane, 2015; Kahane & Shackel, 2010). For instance, the assumption cannot account for the possibility that a man finds pushing a fat man off a footbridge to his death intrinsically appealing (Bartels & Pizzarro, 2011). Furthermore, moral dilemmas are seen as fundamentally too complex, unusual, and far-fetched. In view of all the foregoing points, the
2 Look into: Treémoliere, B. & De Neys, W. (2013). Methodological concerns in moral judgement research:
Severity of harm shapes moral decisions, Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (8), pp. 989-993, for a more thorough addressing of methodological concerns in moral judgement research.
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question arises whether or not it can be assumed that the endorsement of utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas truly reflect a genuine utilitarian outlook.
Certain research regarding psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgment contribute this uncertainty. It was shown that patients with known deficits in social/emotional processing (e.g., lack of empathy), such as patients with lesions involving ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), endorse utilitarian moral judgment in moral dilemmas (Koenigs et al., 2012; Koenigs et al., 2007).
There is another line of arguments for rebutting the assumption that utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas reflect an impartial concern for the greater good. Various studies found that utilitarian judgment is associated with anti-social traits such as psychopathy (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011; Glenn et al., 2010; Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013; Kahane et al., 2015; Koenigs et al., 2012). Other studies found an association with low empathic concern (Choe & Min, 2011; Crockett et al., 2010) and immoral and self-centered judgments. Notably, these findings are diametrically opposed to the impartial concern for the greater good, the core of utilitarian ethics (Kahane et al., 2015). Individuals with psychopathy are selfish, lack empathy (callousness) and guilt and are further characterised by manipulativeness, antisocial behaviour and poor behavioural control (Foulkes et al., 2014a; Foulkes et al., 2014b; Tassy et al., 2013). Psychopaths are known for their immmoral behaviour (Koenigs et al., 2012). In spite of the aforementioned research, there does not seem to be a general consensus in the literature about the association between psychopathy and the endorsement of moral dilemmas. For example, Cima et al. (2010) found no difference in utilitarian moral judgment between psychopaths and non-psychopaths even though psychopaths showed reduced emotional processing (see also e.g., Tassy et al., 2009). This finding has been supported by several studies (Glenn et al., 2009; Seara-Cardoso, 2016; Seara-Cardoso, 2012). It has been argued that the heterogeneity of psychopaths explains the
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finding of normal levels of utilitarian moral judgment among psychopaths (Koenigs et al., 2012).
More recently, a study assessed which factor of psychopathy is associated with utilitarian moral responses (Gao & Tang, 2013). Psychopathy is generally conceptualised as a two-factor construct. Factor 1 consists of dysfunctional affective/interpersonal traits (lack of empathy, callousness, fearlessness, and manipulativeness), whereas Factor 2 consists of problematic lifestyle/antisocial behaviour. The traits of Factor 1 are considered to distinguish individuals who are psychopathic from those who are antisocial but not psychopathic (Blair et al., 2005; Foulkes et al., 2014a) and are the fundamental characteristics of psychopathy. However, there a contradictory results. On the one hand, a study shows that the association between utilitarian judgment and psychopathic traits is mainly driven by externalizing characteristics (Factor 2) (Gao & Tang, 2013), whereas another study shows that such an association is mainly driven by low-anxious subtype of psychopathy (Factor 1) (Koenigs et
al., 2012).3 Regarding the contradictory results between the difference in utilitarian judgment
between psychopaths and non-psychopaths: it has also been proposed that high level of psychopathic traits are associated with increased utilitarianism in choice of action ("Would you …in order to …?") but not in moral judgment ("Is it acceptable to …in order to …?"). The possible existence of such a relation may explain the contradictory results of previous studies where this difference was not considered (Tassy et al., 2013).
It follows that certain aspects are still unclear or lack solid results. Until now the association between utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas and a utilitarian outlook received little research focus. Suggestive as it may be, current research (e.g., Kahane et al., 2015) does not provide sufficient convincing support to state that there is an association between psychopathy and the endorsement of utilitarian judgment. Contradictory results
3 For the sake of completeness, it must be stated that the latter study did not make an explicit distinction
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argue for further investigation. In addition, previous research has also indicated that further support is needed to distinguish which factor of psychopathy is associated with utilitarian judgment. The aim of this research was therefore to directly research the relation between utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas and impartial concern for the greater good.
To examine whether utilitarian judgment reflects a truly utilitarian outlook, all the participants were subjected to moral dilemmas and monetary dilemmas. The monetary dilemmas (a modified dictator game) are another - realised in a more everyday context - predictor for the greater good and demonstrate that someone has utilitarian preferences. Considering the evidence in favour of the challenging view in research, that there is no association between utilitarian judgment and a utilitarian outlook, it was expected that i) participants with higher psychopathic traits are more likely to endorse utilitarian judgments in personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. Furthermore, since the traits of Factor 1 of the two-factor construct of psychopathy are seen as the fundamental characteristics of psychopathy, it was expected that ii) the relationship will be primarily due to Factor 1, as opposed to Factor 2. In addition, it was anticipated that iii) the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas is not linked to greater giving in the monetary dilemmas, which would be a utilitarian outcome.
Study 1
Method Participants and procedure
237 first-year Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) Psychology students (170 females and 67 males), aged between 17 - 37 (M = 20.09, SD = 2.19), participated to the study as part of the mandatory 'testweek' retake. With the exception of one, the participants were compensated with research credit for participating. No general exclusion criteria were applied, besides that the participants could not have participated in the original 'testweek'.
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The study contained a questionnaire with several sections. The monetary and moral dilemmas were randomised, whereas the measurement of psychopathic traits always took place after these dilemmas. The participants were informed that two randomly selected participants were going to be entitled to the money in accordance with the monetary dilemmas distribution.
Materials
Psychopathic traits were measured with the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale Short Form (SRP-SF), which is derived from the SRP-III (Paulhaus et al., 2015). This scale originally contains 29 items. Responses are given on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The output of the SRP-SF is a psychopathy score, containing scores for Factor 1 and Factor 2. An example question tied to Factor 1 is: "Sometimes people say I don't have a heart". An example question tied to Factor 2 is: "I have threatened people so that they would give me money, clothes or make-up". Two attention checks were added. The non-translated version of the SRP-SF has good construct validity. There is a strong correlation with the most widely used clinical psychopathy assessment, the PCL-R (Paulhus et al., 2015). Additionally, the reliability of the scale was good (Cronbach Alpha for both factors: .80) (Foulkes et al., 2014). Although the internal consistency was shown to be satisfactory to excellent, the Dutch version of the SRP-SF has not yet been evaluated for internal consistency (Gordts et al., 2015).
There were three personal and three impersonal dilemmas. Three of the dilemmas were directly taken from previous research, two of them were altered and one dilemma was specially constructed for the purpose of this research. All the dilemmas were translated in Dutch by an English tutor and checked by another one and have the following criteria in common: the person sacrificed should not be going to die anyway, the dilemma should not
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include saving yourself, the person being killed ought not to have bad intent. The participants were asked how acceptable (indicating moral judgment, other than moral action) the utilitarian endorsement would be. Responses were given on a 6 point Likert-type scale. The converted total score ranged between -2.5 (completely unacceptable) and 2.5 (completely acceptable), with zero being neutral. Higher average scores were more strongly utilitarian than lower average scores. Each question was phrased so that a positive response would be in line with the utilitarian response: saving the highest number of people.
Two monetary dilemmas were designed. The participant had the choice to distribute money to oneself, or to donate money to either a charity of their choice or to a randomly determined person who also took part in the experiment. Every euro that the participant donated, was worth double. Every euro that the participant took, was worth half of the original amount. Consequently, taking more money lowered the total sum of money. The 100 euro dilemma had a slider with five options: maximum: (get € 0 : donate € 100) and minimum (get € 50 : donate € 0). The 75 euro dilemma also had a slider with five options: maximum (get € 0 : donate € 75) and minimum (get € 37.5 : donate € 0). The monetary dilemmas provide a monetary index of utilitarianism. The higher the sum of money, the more utilitarian the outcome.
Results
27 participants were excluded for failing the attention checks. One participant was excluded for writing self in ‘other charity’. Thirteen participants were excluded for neglecting to fill in their date of birth. Seven participants were excluded due to the fact that their scores on how honestly they paid attention to their answers were more than three standard deviations lower from the mean.
In order to assess the association and their strength, between variables, bivariate correlations were conducted. All the variables were not normally distributed, as assessed by
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Shapiro-Wilk's test (p < .05). Due to the large sample size (N > 40), the violation of normality did not entail a non-parametric test (Ghasemi & Zahediasl, 2012). Table 1 shows Factor 1 was associated with the endorsement of personal (r = .21 , p = .001) and impersonal (r = .18,
p = .005) dilemmas. Furthermore, Factor 2 was associated with the endorsement of personal
(r = .16, p = .014) and impersonal (r = .16, p .015) dilemmas. These correlations are considered small (Cohen, 1992). In addition, there is no correlation between the sum of money and the endorsement of personal and impersonal moral dilemmas.
Table 1
Basic descriptives and bivariate correlations between main study variables for Study 1.
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 1. Personal dilemmas -.24 .92 - - .21** .16* .01 2. Impersonal dilemmas .44 .93 - - .18** .16* -.02 3. Factor 1 24.45 7.7 - .67** -.08 4. Factor 2 25.74 5.53 - -.08 5. Sum of money 143.42 26 - * p < .05, ** p < .01.
Taking into account the previously found associations, multiple regressions have been conducted to test if Factor 1 and Factor 2 significantly predicted the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. There was independence of residuals (lack of autocorrelation), as assessed by a Durbin-Watson statistic of 1.86 (personal) and 2.05 (impersonal). The independent variables collectively were linearly related to the dependent variable. There was no linear relationship between each of the independent variables and the dependent variable. Furthermore, there was homoscedasticity, by visual inspection of a plot of studentised residuals versus unstandardised predicted values. Although there is a high correlation (Cohen, 1992) between Factor 1 and Factor 2, there is assumable no collinearity within the data. Additionally, the residuals (errors) are normally distributed.
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The results regarding the personal dilemmas show that Factor 1 was as good of an overall fit for the data as the combination of Factor 1 and Factor 2 was. R² for Factor 1 was 4.2% with an adjusted R² of 3.8%, while R² for Factor 2, while controlling for Factor 1 was 4.3% with an adjusted R² of 3.5%. Factor 1 as a model statistically predicted personal dilemmas, F(1,235) = 10.42, p = .001. Adding Factor 2 to this model does not comprise this,
F(2,234) = 5.30, p = .006. However, the combination of Factor 1 and Factor 2 was not a
significant better model than Factor 1 as a model, F (1,234) = .21, p = .649. While controlling for Factor 2, Factor 1 was a significant predictor, β = .02, t(234) = 2.09, p = .038. The more Factor 1 psychopathic traits, the higher the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in personal moral dilemmas. On the other hand Factor 2 was not a significant predictor, while controlling for Factor 1, β = .01 t(234) = .46, p = .649. This indicates there was a correlation between Factor 2 and personal moral dilemmas, due to relation between Factor 1 and Factor 2.
The results regarding the impersonal dilemmas also show that Factor 1 was as good of a fit for the data as the combination of Factor 1 and Factor 2 was. R² for Factor 1 was 3.3% with an adjusted R² of 3.9%, while R² for Factor 2, while controlling for Factor 1 was 3.5% with an adjusted R² of 2.7%. Factor 1 as a model statistically predicted personal dilemmas,
F(1,235) = 7.95, p = .005. Adding Factor 2 to this model does not comprise this statistically
prediction, F(2,234) = 5.30, p = .015. However, the combination of Factor 1 and Factor 2 was not a significant better model than Factor 1 as a model, F (1,234) = .59, p = .442. Factor 1 was a significant predictor, β = .02, t(234) = 2.82, p = .005. While controlling for Factor 2, Factor 1 was not a significant predictor, β = .02, t(234) = 1.58, p = .116. Furthermore, Factor 2 was not a significant predictor, while controlling for Factor 1, β = .01 t(234) = .77,
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Table 2
Multiple regression analyses demonstrating associations between utilitarian judgment in personal and impersonal dilemmas and predictors for Study 1.
Personal dilemmas Impersonal dilemmas
Variables β t p β t p
Factor 1 .03 3.23 .001 .02 2.82 .005
Factor 1, controlled .02 2.09 .038 .02 1.58 .116
Factor 2, controlled .01 .46 .649 .01 .77 .442
Note. Controlled = while controlling for the other Factor of psychopathy.
By means of an explorative analysis, a multiple regression was conducted to test if the four facets of Factor 1 and Factor 2 separately predicted the endorsement of utilitarian judgment. It showed that for both the personal dilemmas, β = .04, t(234) = 3.28, p = .001, as well as for the impersonal dilemmas, β = .04, t(234) = 3.02, p = .003, only the interpersonal facet was a predictor. Higher interpersonal facet traits, means a more likely endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas. The P values expressed that none of the other facets were a significant predictor (p < .05).
Interim Discussion
As expected, the results suggest that individuals with higher psychopathic traits are more likely to endorse utilitarian judgments in personal and impersonal dilemmas and that this relationship is primarily due to Factor 1. Although Factor 1 was only a significant predictor for impersonal dilemmas while not controlling for Factor 2, it was assumed that Factor 1 was a significant predictor for impersonal dilemmas. The findings that the adding of Factor 2 to Factor 1 as a model hardly increased the R² (.002) and the F Change (.593), contribute to the aforementioned assumption because it implies that Factor 1 explains the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral impersonal dilemmas. Furthermore, the results
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as predicted suggest that the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas is not associated with greater giving in the monetary dilemmas.
Study 2
Method Participants and procedure
30 UvA students (16 females and 14 males), aged between 18-31 (M = 21.76, SD 3.18), participated to the study. The participants were recruited through the university lab webpage. No general exclusion criteria were applied. Every research cycle required two participants. Due to logistical issues, one of the researchers participated as the participant. In order to standardise the interaction, we drafted a script for the other-participant. The researcher mentioned to forget to bring the documents, leaving the participants in the same room for two minutes. The other-participant would initiate a brief interaction. When the researcher returned the participants were asked to pick an envelope out of a small container. The participant and other-participant were told not to open the envelopes until they were in the cubicle and that the envelope contained a token of which the colour would determine whether they were selected to make an additional task. However, the participant always made the additional task. The goal of this "selection" was to make the participant think that the other-participant will genuinely not know what the outcome of the monetary dilemmas will be. The monetary (described as being the additional task) and moral dilemmas were randomised, whereas the measurement of psychopathic traits always took place after these dilemmas and was followed by the measurement of interpersonal attraction. Additionally, the participants were informed that two randomly selected participants were going to be entitled to the money in accordance with the monetary dilemmas distribution.
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Materials
Psychopathic traits and moral dilemmas were assessed as previously discussed under Study 1. In deviation from study 1, the participant had the choice to distribute money to oneself, or to donate money to the other-participant. For the remaining part the monetary dilemmas were assessed as previously discussed under Study 1.
Interpersonal attraction was measured with seven items based on the measurement of interpersonal attraction by McCroskey, McCroskey and Richmond (2006). Responses are given on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The converted total score ranged between -2 (completely disagree) and 2 (completely agree), with zero being neutral. Two example questions are: "I think the other-participant could be a friend of mine" and "I do not think the other-participant would fit into my circle of friends". From Croes, Antheunis, Schouten and Krahmer (2016) an eight item was abstracted: "I would like to meet up again with the other-participant". All the questions were translated in Dutch. In order to overcome possible influence of participants knowing the other-participant, a control question was added: "Do you more than vaguely know the other-participant?".
Results
One participant was excluded for failing the attention checks. Another participant was excluded for knowing the other-participant. In order to assess the association and their strength, between variables, bivariate correlations were conducted. The sum of money of the monetary dilemmas, t(30) = 0.841, p < .001, was not normally distributed, as assessed by Shapiro-Wilk's test. Due to the large variety of variables, the violation of normality did not entail a non-parametric test. Table 3 shows there are no correlations between Factor 1 and Factor 2, and the endorsement of personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. In addition, there is no correlation between the endorsement of personal and impersonal moral dilemmas and greater giving in the monetary dilemmas.
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Table 3
Basic descriptives and bivariate correlations between main study variables for Study 2.
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 1. Personal dilemmas -.52 .69 - - -.26 -.23 .01 2. Impersonal dilemmas .32 .94 - - .24 .09 .-.07 3. Factor 1 24.97 6.55 - .63* -.08 4. Factor 2 27.67 5.12 - -.07 5. Sum of money 122.16 19.98 - ** p < .01. Interim discussion
Contrary to expectations, the results suggest that individuals with higher psychopathic traits are not more likely to endorse utilitarian judgments in personal and impersonal dilemmas. Interestingly, there is no association between the endorsement of utilitarian judgment and greater giving in the monetary dilemmas. By being another indicator of utilitarian outcome, the lack of association with greater giving in the monetary dilemmas is in contrast with the aforementioned finding.
General discussion
This research investigated whether utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas expresses a truly utilitarian outlook by reflecting an impartial concern for the greater good. For the
majority the results4 are as expected. Although the studies did not correspond with each other
on the association between psychopathic traits and the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas, the lack of association between the endorsement and greater giving in the monetary dilemmas was consistent. Taken together, the findings predominantly suggest
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that there is no association between the endorsement of utilitarian judgment in moral dilemmas and a truly utilitarian outlook.
Possibly, the question arises if the interpretation of the studies lead to cherry picking to support the conclusion. However, there is no supressing of contradictory results. Although all the results have been considered, the studies were weighted differently. The reason therefore lies in the fact that the studies can by no means considered to be equal. Since larger studies should carry more weight due to producing a more 'precise' estimate of the population parameter, the results of Study 1 carry more weight than the results of Study 2. A post hoc power analyse that was conducted using G*Power (Erdfelder, Faul, & Buchner, 1996) confirmed the lack of statistical power in Study 2. Be that as it may, it could be argued that a potential explanation for the deviating findings of Study 2 is related to how anonymous the participants perceived their responses. Feeling less anonymous could possibly entail a response bias. However, this was controlled for by addressing moral judgment rather than moral action as there should be a lesser degree of referent processing for moral judgments. This means that one does not need to project oneself into a situation and is more of an observer than an agent in the scenario, making the response less personal (Tassy et al., 2013). The findings in several ways support the emerging view in research that rejects the assumption that utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas truly reflect an impartial concern for the greater good. First of all, in accordance with previous research (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011; Glenn et al., 2010; Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013; Kahane et al., 2015; Koenigs et al., 2012) utilitarian judgment is associated with psychopathic traits in individuals. Furthermore, utilitarian judgment is not associated with greater giving in the monetary dilemmas, which would be a utilitarian outcome. The added value of this research is the replication of previous research, while taking into account a more everyday indicator for an impartial concern for
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the greater good. The monetary dilemmas shed new light on having a utilitarian outlook in other moral contexts.
Interestingly, there was a preliminary new insight to prior research. The relationship between utilitarian judgment and personal and impersonal moral dilemmas showed to be primarily due to the interpersonal facet of Factor 1. It could be argued that this finding is in contrast with research that found an association with low empathic concern (the other facet of Factor 1) (Choe & Min, 2011; Crockett et al., 2010). However, this cannot be concluded due to a lack of research that literally considered both facets and controlled for one and other. By any means, the finding does not jeopardize the conclusion that Factor 1 explains the relationship (Koenigs et al., 2012) and on the other hand does not enhance the statement that the association is mainly driven by externalizing characteristics (Factor 2) (Gao & Tang, 2013). In order to make substantive statements about the relationship between the two facets of Factor 1, additional research should take place.
Some may argue that the conclusion in Study 1 that the higher psychopathic traits, the higher endorsement of utilitarian judgment in impersonal dilemmas should face criticism. Raised issues will assumable address the finding that Factor 1 was only a significant predictor for impersonal dilemmas in absence of Factor 2, and potentially that such finding should alter the overall research conclusion. In addition to the justification addressed earlier, a possible explanation is the influence of multicollinearity. This exists when there is a strong correlation (which is generally considered: > .8) between two predictors (i.e., Factor 1 and Factor 2: .67) (Field, 2013). Nevertheless, it will now be illustrated why the overall conclusion will not be amended even though some criticism proves to be founded. This relates to the distinction between personal and impersonal dilemmas. An impersonal transgression to commit harm in order to achieve a goal (Gao & Tang, 2013) is considered to be less emotionally intense, than a personal transgression (Cima et al., 2010; Greene et al.,
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2001). It shows both that there is a critical role for emotions in moral judgment (Gao & Tang, 2013), as well as that there is a degree in how morally reprehensible a transgression is (Kahane, 2015). Since psychopaths have diminished emotional processing (Cima et al., 2010), psychopaths are more likely to endorse utilitarian judgment in personal moral dilemmas than psychopaths. At the same time this means that this tendency for non-psychopaths is perceived psychological unhealthy and morally undesirable, while this is not the case for the endorsement of impersonal dilemmas. Therefore, the endorsement of utilitarian judgement in personal dilemmas is of higher value for the conclusion than the impersonal dilemmas.
A few limitations need to be addressed. First of all, Study 1 was one of many studies that the participants had to undergo during a three hour session. Although it is impossible to pinpoint the direct effect of this endurance test on our results, one should take into account any possible effect. It is, after all, common knowledge that the attention span is not limitless. In order to anticipate such an effect, the data was controlled for the total time spent on the test. However, no exclusions were thought necessary.
Moreover, a convenience sample was used in Study 1. Clearly, first year psychology students do not make a heterogeneous sample related to, among other things, being on average 20 years old. In specifically addressing the average age, it would be informative to use a sample with a higher average age in future studies since research shows that moral judgment can change by age due to the maturing of cognitive processes (Caravita et al., 2017). Although this research shows that moral judgment does not reflect a utilitarian decision making process, the same cannot with full certainty be concluded for other age groups.
This research validates the recent line of research that questions the adequateness of moral dilemmas to measure moral preferences and therefore raises concern on the use of
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moral dilemmas in understanding the underlying processes of moral judgment. Notwithstanding the complexity of the assignment, future studies into moral decision making should focus on other indicators of moral judgment than moral dilemmas.
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