Order Effects in Moral Judgment. Searching for an Explanation

Order Effects in Moral Judgment Searching for an Explanation Alex Wiegmann (alex.wiegmann@psych.uni-goettingen.de) Department of Psychology, Gosslerstr. 14 University of Gottingen, Germany Yasmina Okan (yokan@ugr.es) Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada Campus Universitario de la Cartuja s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain Abstract Research on moral judgment has shown that the order in which dilemmas are presented to subjects often has a strong influence on their judgment. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying order effects are still opaque. In this paper we aimed to isolate the features that a scenario must exhibit in order to influence judgment of subsequent scenarios. For this enterprise, we identified several features from a scenario known to cause order effects, and tested which of these features are necessary to influence subsequent scenarios. Although we still do not have a full understanding of what causes order effects, we made significant progress towards this aim. In five experiments we ruled out some promising explanations such as order effects being driven by an emotional activation linked to the first scenario. Instead, we found order effects to depend on whether the scenario being influenced and its preceding scenario share rather subtle structural similarities. Keywords: Order effects; moral judgment; trolley dilemma. Introduction Imagine one group of subjects is presented with two moral dilemmas, A and B, one after the other. For each of these scenarios subjects have to make a judgment concerning which of two different hypothetical actions should be taken by the agent in each case. In both dilemmas, the life of people is at stake. Imagine a second group of subjects is presented with the same task, the only difference being the order in which the two scenarios are presented. From a normative perspective it seems clear that the order of presentation should not influence subjects’ judgments. However, a number of studies have shown that the order of presentation actually influences judgments. Moreover, the impact of the order of presentation is often stronger than that of factors that are generally considered to influence moral judgments (e.g., the existence of physical contact with the potential victim in the scenarios; Wiegmann, Okan, & Nagel, 2012) Interestingly, not only lay people are susceptible to order effects but also professional philosophers (Schwitzgebel & Cushman, 2012). In the paper at hand we present five experiments aiming to identify the factors causing order effects. The question guiding the experiments that will be reported is: Which are the features of a scenario known to cause order effects that enable it to influence other scenarios? Wiegmann et al. (2012) claimed that research on moral judgment pointed to a systematic pattern of order effects that had been previously overlooked: Only judgments of actions that are normally (i.e., if judged in isolation) regarded as morally acceptable are affected by the order of presentation, and this is only the case if the dilemma is immediately preceded by a dilemma in which the proposed action was not considered as morally acceptable. If there is such a constellation, judgments of actions normally regarded as morally acceptable can approach judgments of previous actions (i.e., they can be deemed as less acceptable). In order to test this claim Wiegmann and colleagues presented two groups of subjects with five trolley dilemmas, one after another (see Table 1). In all cases a train out of control was heading towards three railroad workers. An action was described that could be conducted by an agent in the situation to save the workers. This action varied in each of the five scenarios. The ordering of the scenarios was based on the level of agreement with the proposed action in each case, according to independent judgments provided in an independent pilot study (see Table 1). Level of agreement was measured on a scale of 1 to 6, where 1 was “not at all”, and 6 was “absolutely”. While in one group the level of agreement with the proposed action steadily increased, it decreased in the other group. Table 1: Summaries of the actions proposed in the five dilemmas. Scenario Proposed action Push Push a large person from a bridge to stop the train Trap Push a button that will open a trap door that will let a person on top of the bridge fall and stop the train Redirect Redirect a train with a person inside that is on a parallel track onto the main track to stop the train Run Over Redirect an empty train that is on a parallel track onto the main track to stop the train, running over a person that is on the connecting track Standard Press a switch that will redirect the train that is out of control to a parallel track where one person will be run over