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Correlation between country-level collectivism and effect size of the interaction between personal force and intention on the trolley problem a,b, Correlation between country-level collectivism and the η² effect size of the interaction between personal force and intention with all exclusion criteria applied (a) and including familiar participants (b) on the trolley problem. The size of the circles indicates the size of the sample in a given country. The blue line is the weighted regression. MYS, Malaysia; CHN, China; IND, India; THA, Thailand; MKD, Macedonia; PAK, Pakistan; IRN, Iran; JPN, Japan; GBR, Great Britain; FRA, France; HUN, Hungary; COL, Colombia; ARG, Argentina; TUR, Turkey; ECU, Ecuador; CHL, Chile; PER, Peru; PHL, Philippines; MEX, Mexico; USA, United States; SRB, Serbia; RUS, Russia; DEU, Germany; CAN, Canada; POL, Poland; ITA, Italy; KAZ, Kazakhstan; NZL, New Zealand; NLD, The Netherlands; ROU, Romania; BRA, Brazil; SGP, Singapore; ESP, Spain; AUS, Australia; BGR, Bulgaria; CHE, Switzerland.
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The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...
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Citations
... In this scenario, a runaway trolley is headed toward five workers on one track, and the option is to divert it onto another track with one worker [2]. The current focus of research on the trolley problem and other moral dilemmas is on comparing two normative ethical approaches: deontological perspectives and utilitarian judgments [3]. However, these normative ethical theories have limitations in real-world applications as they oversimplify complex scenarios and may not consider all factors influencing moral decisions [4]. ...
... Southern Cultures: Participants from Southern cultures tended to be more influenced by social and emotional factors, such as personal responsibility and the potential for blame, in their moral judgments. Western Cultures: Individuals from Western cultures exhibited a mixed pattern, with some endorsing utilitarian judgments and others emphasizing rules and duties to make the decision [3]. It can be reasonably concluded. ...
... In the previous research, participants were less likely to endorse utilitarian choices when the victim was a loved one or someone they knew personally, highlighting the influence of emotional closeness. They were more likely to endorse utilitarian choices when the action was perceived as less directly causing harm (e.g., pushing a button to divert the trolley) versus directly pushing someone onto the tracks [3]. Despite applying normative ethics as a basis, these two arguments are situational factors, closeness to the victim, and agency, respectively. ...
Scholars have been constantly interested in studying moral quandaries, including the trolley problem. Despite their widespread adoption, normative ethical theories have challenges in real-world scenarios. This study explores the impact of interpersonal and cross-cultural factors on trolley dilemma judgments through the Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) model. The study mainly reviews pertinent literature and discusses how the MAC model applies to the trolley dilemma. It demonstrates how interpersonal relationships and cultural norms influence decision-making. Eastern civilizations, for instance, place a high value on communal welfare. Although it has limitations, the MAC model provides a more thorough framework than normative ethics. The MAC model is a prospective alternative, but further research is required to better comprehend moral dilemmas and bridge the disparity between theory and practice in morality research, particularly in enhancing the accuracy of interpersonal perception and methodological considerations.
... But this results still suggest the cultural difference may change at each age stage and a larger matched sample is needed for further cultural compare. A recent study about moral judgments in trolley dilemma in cultural diverse sample in Eastern, Western and Southern countries found that the personal force (i.e., whether or not to use personal effort to kill the one person) effect was universal in all cultural clusters, but found no strong association between collective/individual culture and moral judgments (Bago et al. 2022). ...
This study explores how peers influence the moral decisions of Chinese adolescents (12‐ to 16‐year‐olds, Mage = 14.32, n = 84) and young adults (18‐ to 26‐year‐olds, Mage = 20.92, n = 99) in moral dilemmas. Participants were asked to make moral decisions individually and then collectively within groups of three to reach a consensus in Trolly dilemma and Footbridge dilemma. They were also required to evaluate the degree to which they felt their decisions were moral. Results showed that adolescents tended to choose “action” (pull the lever in Trolly dilemma, or push the man in Footbridge dilemma) more than adults, and evaluate their “no action” choice as more immoral than young adults across both individual and group settings. Adolescents showed consistent decision‐making patterns regardless of whether decisions were made individually or collectively, while adults were more likely to choose “no action” in group decision‐making. Our results suggest that adolescents are more utilitarian than young adults when making decisions in moral dilemmas, compared to young adults. Young adults are less likely to make utilitarian choices when they are in groups than when they make decisions individually.
... Specifically, morality refers to the principles that guide individuals in distinguishing right from wrong and making decisions that uphold social norms. In order to maintain coherence and avoid actions that violate collective moral principles, which might hinder access to key social and psychological benefits, individuals must evaluate moral situations and respond appropriately [2]. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have found that individuals are significantly influenced by emotions when assessing moral situations; for instance, individuals with low empathy tend to disregard moral norms when they receive negative emotional feedback [3]. ...
Background: Moral evaluation is identified as the first stage in the theory of moral judgment, and academics believe that it may align with the social intuitionist model. This study aims to prove that the model’s emotional dominance hypothesis applies to moral evaluation by presenting a computational decision-making model that mathematically formalizes this emotional dominance decision-making process. We also compared different types of valence evaluation tasks to test the emotional priority hypothesis. Methods: We used a convenience sampling method to randomly recruit 30 enrolled college students. The drift-diffusion model was employed to analyze reaction times for words with various emotional and moral valences Additionally, we designed different valence evaluation tasks based on the response relevance hypothesis and evaluated the processing order through reaction time comparisons. Results: The analysis revealed that the emotional mechanism of immoral evaluation differs from moral evaluation. An increase in emotional valence accelerates the speed of evidence accumulation (v) for moral evaluation (M = 1.21, 0.2% < 0 < 99.8%) but lowers decision caution (a) in immoral evaluation (M = −0.64, 96.1% < 0 < 3.9%). In contrast, moral valence does not have a significant influence on evaluation processes (v, M = −0.28, 72.1% < 0 < 27.9%; a, M = −0.32, 79.3% < 0 < 20.7%). Furthermore, We found no significant difference in reaction times between moral and immoral words in the emotional evaluation task (F(1,29) = 0.55, p = 0.464, partial η2 = 0.02), but a significant difference existed in the moral evaluation task (F(1,29) = 17.99, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.38), indicating that the tendency of relatively fast immoral evaluation in emotional evaluation tasks may be caused by emotional priority. Conclusions: Our findings support the intuitive model’s emotional dominance hypothesis and introduce a new emotional mechanism into moral evaluation. This study clarifies the distinct emotional processes in moral and immoral evaluations, fills a gap in the research on moral evaluation, and offers insights into human decision-making in moral contexts.
... In psychological science, we are almost always interested in investigating some kind of latent variable (e.g., personality traits like extraversion). The object of research is often the comparison of mean values of latent variables (or measurements thereof) between different groups; for example, prosociality or moral judgements across countries (Bago et al., 2022;House et al., 2020). This includes both comparisons between different groups (e.g., in cross-cultural research; Milfont & Fischer, 2010) or comparisons across subsequent measurements within the same group (e.g., pre-and posttreatment). ...
... MGFR resolves the rotational indeterminacy per group and locates non-invariant factor loadings by means of hypothesis testing. We demonstrate all of this on an empirical data example from moral psychology (Bago et al., 2022). Because the methods differ in their assumptions and outcomes, a direct comparison does not make too much sense. ...
... For our empirical demonstration of the presented methods, we used the dataset published by Bago et al. (2022) and investigated MI of the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS; Kahane et al., 2018). In a multilab study, Bago et al. (2022) examined the influence of psychological and situational factors on the judgement of moral dilemmas. ...
... "What is the sum of 10 and 8?"), as this might indicate the participant was providing careless responses throughout the questionnaire. During the pilot, 30 (7.5%) participants answered at least one attention check incorrectly (see "Pilot Data" for more details of the pilot), but previous large-scale projects have had considerably higher exclusion rates due to failed attention checks 78 , so we consider this reasonable. Our sampling plan will be able to account for potentially higher rates of exclusions, as indicated above. ...
Biases in favor of culturally prevalent social ingroups are ubiquitous, but random assignment to arbitrary experimentally created social groups is also sufficient to create ingroup biases (i.e., the minimal group effect; MGE). The extent to which ingroup bias arises from specific social contexts versus more general psychological tendencies remains unclear. This registered report focuses on three questions. First, how culturally prevalent is the MGE? Second, how do critical cultural and individual factors moderate its strength? Third, does the MGE meaningfully relate to culturally salient real-world ingroup biases? We compare the MGE to bias in favor of a family member (first cousin) and a national ingroup member. We propose to recruit a sample of > 200 participants in each of > 50 nations to examine these questions and advance our understanding of the psychological foundations and cultural prevalence of ingroup bias.
... Causal inference; directed acyclic graphs; measurement invariance; moderated non-linear factor analysis With increasingly larger and culturally diverse data sets available, social and behavioral scientists are able to research human experiences and behavior in much broader contexts. For example, extensive studies have been conducted on cultural differences in moral judgement (Bago et al., 2022), prosocial behavior (House et al., 2020), and the values of emotions in societies (Bastian et al., 2014). These new opportunities come with new challenges: we need transparent and objective rules about how to adequately compare groups and under which assumptions we are allowed to generalize results from one group to another. ...
... To now show how (non-)invariance can be depicted by a DAG and to demonstrate how this can help to investigate MI in a more informative manner, we want to introduce an empirical example from moral psychology. In a multilab replication study, Bago et al. (2022) investigated which psychological and situational factors influence the judgement of moral dilemmas. They gathered data from 45 countries in all inhabited continents, leading to a final sample of N ¼ 22, 112 (after applying exclusion criteria like careless responding). ...
... To mimic the analysis of the simulated example in the example on the real data published by Bago et al. (2022), we only considered observations from group western whose age was above 30 years. This was done to achieve two approximately equally sized groups (n western ¼ 2, 911; n eastern ¼ 2, 941) with differing mean ages (M western ¼ 43:22; M eastern ¼ 26:13). ...
... Importantly, this view also accounts for the absence of L2p modulations, and of the MFLE at large, in impersonal dilemmas. Overall, relative to personal dilemmas, impersonal ones show no predominance of personal force (Bago et al., 2022), an increased preference for action Stankovic et al., 2022) and the already discussed lack of MFLE on bilinguals. In our proposed theoretical framework, reduced L2p would modulate different factors of affectivity and cognitive control that specifically increase preference for action on personal dilemmas. ...
Socio-cognitive research on bilinguals points to a moral foreign-language effect (MFLE), with more utilitarian choices (e.g., sacrificing someone to save more people) for moral dilemmas presented in the second language (L2) relative to the first language. Yet, inconsistent results highlight the influence of subject-level variables, including a critical underexplored factor: L2 proficiency (L2p). Here we provide a systematic review of 57 bilingualism studies on moral dilemmas, showing that L2p rarely modulates responses to impersonal dilemmas, but it does impact personal dilemmas (with MFLEs proving consistent at intermediate L2p levels but unsystematic at high L2p levels). We propose an empirico-theoretical framework to conceptualize such patterns, highlighting the impact of L2p on four affective mediating factors: mental imagery, inhibitory control, prosocial behavior and numerical processing. Finally, we outline core challenges for the field. These insights open new avenues at the crossing of bilingualism and social cognition research.
... Indeed, when asked to make moral decisions, people from various cultures follow some universal moral principles (Arutyunova et al., 2013(Arutyunova et al., , 2016Awad et al., 2020;Bago et al., 2022). For instance, they do not only act based on utilitarian considerations (maximizing benefits, minimizing cost, Mill, 1863), but on the instrumentality of harm that is associated with an action. ...
Cross-cultural research in moral judgements (e.g., whether to sacrifice one person to save several others) often focuses on differences regarding the instrumentality of harm, i.e., whether the death of one person is an instrument to save several others (instrumental) or is an incidental side-effect (incidental). Less cross-cultural research exists on differences regarding one’s own involvement, i.e., whether one’s own life or only the life of others is at risk. The present study investigated the influence of both factors on moral judgements in a European (Austrian) and an Asian (Mongolian) culture. Austrians and Mongolians read moral dilemmas and chose whether (or not) they would carry out an action that sacrifices one but saves several others. Afterwards, they rated the moral acceptability of that action. Both cultures chose utilitarian actions (sacrificing one to save others) less often in instrumental than in incidental dilemmas. Thus, instrumental harm is universally regarded as worse than incidental harm. In instrumental dilemmas, Mongolians chose more utilitarian actions than Austrians, indicating that Mongolians more likely act in favour of group welfare. In instrumental dilemmas, Austrians chose more utilitarian actions when their own life was at risk than when only the life of others was at risk. In incidental dilemmas, the opposite was observed for Mongolians. Thus, Austrians more likely act in favour of self-interest, whereas Mongolians perceive it as more unvirtuous to harm others to save oneself. Results on moral acceptability ratings and decision times further support those cultural differences. Thus, culture may convey certain moral decisions.
... Moreover, interdependent and collectivistic groups tend to exhibit higher levels of empathic concern (Luo et al., 2015), which has been suggested to have a negative association with "calculated" utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas (Arutyunova et al., 2016;Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013). Meanwhile, social emotions such as guilt and anxiety, which are typically more prevalent and intense in collectivistic cultures (Heinrichs et al., 2006;Scollon et al., 2004), might also deter people from deliberately causing harm in such dilemmas (Bago et al., 2022;Perkins et al., 2013). 9 Another explanation for this difference is the greater prevalence of fatalism in Chinese culture (Ahlenius & Tännsjö, 2012;Gold et al., 2014;Winskel & Bhatt, 2020). ...
Analytic philosophy has been developing in China for over a century, and philosophers shaped by the analytic tradition have grown into an important philosophical community in China. The views of contemporary analytic philosophers in China on central philosophical issues and their similarities and differences with analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries have not been systematically investigated. Bourget and Chalmers have conducted two large-scale online questionnaire surveys on analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries. Inspired by their studies, a survey on analytic philosophers in China was performed. It is found that philosophers in China had no agreement on most issues. According to the comparative analysis with the results of Bourget and Chalmers’ second survey, there were significant differences in views as well as thinking styles between analytic philosophers in China and English-speaking countries. And these differences may be partially explained by cultural factors and academic environments.
... Some evidence suggests that moral experiences vary substantially by culture. The relative importance of moral dimensions varies across cultures (Atari et al., 2023;Bago et al., 2022), and different cultures make different assumptions about the values central to morality (Buchtel et al., 2015;Murray et al., 2023); both of these cultural features might make different kinds of everyday moral events more or less salient. Therefore, we will replicate and extend Hofmann et al.'s study with an international sample to explore further cultural variation in moral experiences. ...
Do people in different societies experience morality differently in everyday life? Using experience sampling methods, we investigate everyday moral experiences in a sample from 20 countries across 6 continents, thereby replicating and extending a large-scale study originally conducted in the United States and Canada. We aim to replicate key findings about the kinds of moral experiences people have, the relationship between such experiences and religious or political affiliation, how such experiences affect momentary feelings, and how such experiences influence moral behavior. An international sample enables us to assess the generalizability of these findings across different socio-cultural contexts.
