The costs of being consequentialist
Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9006500 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jim A C Everett (0000-0003-2801-5426, Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, corresponding author), Nadira S Faber (0000-0001-9373-9549, University of Oxford), Julian Savulescu (0000-0003-1691-6403, University of Oxford), Molly J Crockett (0000-0001-8800-410X, Yale University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Pages | 200-216 |
| Publication date | 2018-08-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-1031 • E-ISSN: 1096-0465 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.004 |
| PMID | 30393392 |
| OpenAlex | W2888456782 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 53 |
| References cited | 42 |
Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust "deontological" agents who reject harming one person to save many others than "consequentialist" agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker - but still evident - preferences in the domain of impartial beneficence. In the domain of instrumental harm, non-consequentialist agents were consistently viewed as more moral and trustworthy, preferred for a range of social roles, and entrusted with more money in economic exchanges. In the domain of impartial beneficence, preferences for non-consequentialist agents were observed for close interpersonal relationships requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader). Collectively our findings demonstrate that preferences for non-consequentialist agents are sensitive to the different dimensions of consequentialist thinking and the relational context
Autonomy · Beneficence · Consequentialism · Context (archaeology · Deontological ethics · Epistemology · Harm · Political science · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the Covid-19 pandemic
Aristotle’s intuitionist approach to morality guides a new direction in moral psychology
The Reasonable, the Rational, and the Good
Leveraging social cognition to promote effective climate change mitigation
Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)
Adopted Utility Calculus
The Importance of Context in Moral Judgments
Standing on principle
Trolley Dilemma in Papua. Yali horticulturalists refuse to pull the lever
Bright mind, moral mind? Intelligence is unrelated to consequentialist moral judgment in sacrificial moral dilemmas
Beyond behavior
The good, the bad, and the utilitarian
Effects of perspective switching and utilitarian thinking on moral judgments in a sacrificial dilemma among healthcare and non-healthcare students
Virtues disunited and the folk psychology of character
Human moral reasoning types in autonomous vehicle moral dilemma
Not warm or cold, but appropriate
Loyalty as a Legitimizer of Wage Theft
Impartial Beneficence Predicts Greater and More Uniform Concern for Others Across Social Relationships
Moral Future-Thinking
Gratitude Is Morally Sensitive
The Probabilistic Price of Life Across Time
Biased Benevolence
Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad
The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited
(How) Do You Regret Killing One to Save Five? Affective and Cognitive Regret Differ After Utilitarian and Deontological Decisions
When rules are over-ruled
Perspective taking reduces intergroup bias in visual representations of faces
Social value at a distance
Machines and humans in sacrificial moral dilemmas
What we would (but shouldn't) do for those we love
Principles of moral accounting
Longtermist Education Interventions Increase Concern for and Action to Protect Future Generations
Hadza Hunter-Gatherers Disagree on Perceptions of Moral Character
In Similarity We Trust
Revisiting the divide between deontology and utilitarianism in moral dilemma judgment
No good deed goes unpunished
The MAD Model of Moral Contagion
Ideological differences in moral concern reflect circle expansion, not inversion
Oxford Utilitarianism Scale
Don’t be rash
Beneficiary effects in prosocial decision making
Caring for present and future generations alike
If You Don’t Believe in God, Do You at Least Believe in Aristotle? Evaluations of Religious Outgroup Members Hinge upon Moral Perceptions
Hadza hunter-gatherers are not deontologists and do not prefer deontologists as social partners
Priming intuition disfavors instrumental harm but not impartial beneficence
Autonomous morals
Moral impressions and presumed moral choices
Taking the moral high ground
Re-examining the role of family relationships in structuring perceived helping obligations, and their impact on moral evaluation
From Tribe to Humanity
Learning from outcomes shapes reliance on moral rules versus cost-benefit reasoning
When development constricts our moral circle
Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis
The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham
Inference of trustworthiness from intuitive moral judgments.
Twenty Years of Experimental Gaming
Beyond sacrificial harm
Preferences and beliefs in ingroup favoritism
Extensions of "The Tragedy of the Commons"
Social Dilemmas
When it takes a bad person to do the right thing
Social Justice
‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good
Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History
The Ethics of Care
Prisoner's Dilemma
When Will Your Consequentialist Friend Abandon You for the Greater Good
What We Owe to Each Other
Leaders and Subgroups
Reluctance to vaccinate
Leaders and their treatment of subgroups
The Most Good You Can Do
Judging those who judge
Deliberation erodes cooperative behavior — Even towards competitive out-groups, even when using a control condition, and even when eliminating selection bias
Omission and commission in judgment and choice
The whistleblower's dilemma and the fairness–loyalty tradeoff
More Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma
Waste management
Bad is Stronger than Good
A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation
The Tragedy of the Commons
| Unique citing works | 53 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 53 |