Specker Jona, Schermer Maartje H N, Reiner Peter B
Department of Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine, Erasmus Medical Center, University of Rotterdam, PO Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
National Core for Neuroethics, University of British Columbia, 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T2B5 Canada.
Neuroethics. 2017;10(3):405-417. doi: 10.1007/s12152-017-9340-9. Epub 2017 Jul 27.
To gain insight into the reasons that the public may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological moral enhancement for themselves or for others, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards these issues. Participants ( = 293) from the United States were recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one of several contrastive vignettes in which a 13-year-old child is described as bullying another student in school and then is offered an empathy-enhancing program. The empathy-enhancing program is described as either involving or on a daily basis for four weeks. In addition, participants were asked to imagine either their own child another student at school, or their own child by another student. This resulted in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. In an escalating series of morally challenging questions, we asked participants to rate their support for the program; whether they would support participation; whether they would support requiring participation of children who are to become bullies in the future; whether they would support requiring participation of or even ; and whether they would be willing to participate in the program themselves. We found that people were significantly more troubled by pharmacological as opposed to non-pharmacological moral enhancement interventions. The results indicate that members of the public for the greater part oppose pharmacological moral bioenhancement, yet are open to non-biomedical means to attain moral enhancement. [248 words].
为了深入了解公众可能支持或回避对自己或他人进行药物性道德增强的原因，我们运用实证工具来探究公众对这些问题的态度。通过亚马逊的Mechanical Turk招募了来自美国的293名参与者，并随机分配他们阅读几个对比性的小故事之一，故事中描述一名13岁的孩子在学校欺凌另一名学生，然后为其提供一个增强同理心的项目。该增强同理心的项目被描述为要么涉及每天服用一种药物，要么每天接受一次心理治疗，为期四周。此外，要求参与者想象要么是他们自己的孩子在学校欺凌另一名学生，要么是他们自己的孩子被另一名学生欺凌。这导致了一个2×2的组间设计。在一系列不断升级的道德挑战性问题中，我们要求参与者对他们对该项目的支持程度进行评分；他们是否会支持自己孩子的参与；他们是否会支持要求未来可能成为欺凌者的孩子参与；他们是否会支持要求青少年甚至成年人参与；以及他们自己是否愿意参与该项目。我们发现，与非药物性道德增强干预相比，人们对药物性道德增强干预更为困扰。结果表明，大部分公众反对药物性道德生物增强，但对实现道德增强的非生物医学手段持开放态度。
