Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Jan;48(1):158-170. doi: 10.3758/s13421-019-00969-7.
We created practical moral dilemmas for which participants imagined witnessing a transgression by a target person. The identity of the transgressor was manipulated to be either a stranger or the participant's brother. In Experiment 1, whether the target person committed a violation was left ambiguous. Participants made factual (how strongly they believe the target person actually committed a transgression) and unethicality judgments regarding the incident, and rated their willingness to report the transgressor to the police. Given ambiguity (Experiment 1), participants interpreted the facts in favor of their brother, but not in favor of a stranger. This interpretation led to moral judgments and willingness to report that favored family over strangers, while creating overall coherence in reasoning. In Experiment 2, we eliminated the ambiguity of the factual situation so that the possibility of achieving coherence between unethicality of an act and leniency toward a family member was blocked. Nonetheless, participants were less willing to report their brother to the police. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of the first two experiments within an integrated study design. Results from path analyses indicated that the factual judgment depended on factual understanding of an event, but willingness to report depended on identity of the target (i.e., brother vs. stranger), even at the cost of reduced coherence in reasoning. Moral decisions are thus strongly influenced by agent-relative obligations, such as duty to protect a family member.
我们设计了一些实际的道德困境，让参与者想象目睹目标人物的违规行为。违规者的身份被操纵为陌生人或参与者的兄弟。在实验 1 中，目标人物是否违规的情况是模糊的。参与者对事件做出事实（他们多么强烈地相信目标人实际上犯了错误）和不道德判断，并对他们向警方举报违规者的意愿进行评分。鉴于存在模糊性（实验 1），参与者会从有利于兄弟的角度解释事实，但不会从有利于陌生人的角度解释。这种解释导致了道德判断和报告违规者的意愿，更倾向于家庭而不是陌生人，同时在推理上保持了整体一致性。在实验 2 中，我们消除了事实情况的模糊性，从而阻止了行为不道德性和对家庭成员宽容之间的一致性的可能性。尽管如此，参与者还是不太愿意向警方举报他们的兄弟。实验 3 在一个综合研究设计中复制了前两个实验的发现。路径分析的结果表明，事实判断取决于对事件的事实理解，但举报意愿取决于目标的身份（即兄弟与陌生人），即使这会降低推理的一致性。因此，道德决策受到代理人相对义务的强烈影响，例如保护家庭成员的责任。
