Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Soc Neurosci. 2021 Oct;16(5):500-512. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2021.1953133. Epub 2021 Jul 13.
People often endorse the moral principle that all human lives are equally valuable. At the same time, people often privilege high-status individuals over low-status individuals. These two inclinations come into conflict in a scenario involving the potential killing of a high-status person to save the lives of multiple low-status people. In the present study, participants viewed a series of sacrificial dilemmas in which the social status of the victims and beneficiaries was varied. We measured participants' choice (sacrifice vs. don't sacrifice), response time, and electroencephalographic activity, with an emphasis on conflict negativity (CN). Overall, we found no effects of victim/beneficiaries status on choice and response time. However, participants displayed a more pronounced CN effect when contemplating a high-status victim/low-status beneficiaries tradeoff than a low-status-victim/high-status beneficiaries tradeoff. Further analyses revealed that this effect was primarily driven by participants who endorsed deontological principles (e.g., "Some rules must never be broken, no matter the consequences"). In contrast, those who endorsed utilitarian principles displayed equivalent levels of conflict negativity, regardless of the social status of victims and beneficiaries. These findings shed light on the role of conflict in the phenomenology of moral decision making.
人们常常认可这样一个道德原则，即所有人的生命都是同等有价值的。但与此同时，人们通常会赋予高地位个体以高于低地位个体的特权。当涉及到可能要牺牲一个高地位个体以拯救多个低地位个体的生命这种情况时，这两种倾向就会产生冲突。在本研究中，参与者观看了一系列涉及牺牲困境的场景，其中受害者和受益者的社会地位有所不同。我们测量了参与者的选择（牺牲还是不牺牲）、反应时间和脑电图活动，重点关注冲突负波（CN）。总的来说，我们没有发现受害者/受益者地位对选择和反应时间有任何影响。然而，当参与者考虑高地位受害者/低地位受益者的权衡取舍时，与低地位受害者/高地位受益者的权衡取舍相比，他们表现出更明显的 CN 效应。进一步的分析表明，这种效应主要是由那些认可道义原则（例如，“有些规则绝不能打破，无论后果如何”）的参与者驱动的。相比之下，那些认可功利主义原则的参与者，无论受害者和受益者的社会地位如何，其冲突负波的水平都是相当的。这些发现揭示了冲突在道德决策现象学中的作用。
