Graduate Institute of Mind, Brain and Consciousness, Taipei Medical University, Taipei.
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2024 Oct;77(10):2124-2136. doi: 10.1177/17470218231216428. Epub 2023 Dec 22.
Doing harm is a moral violation, but helping a family member is morally obligatory. In this study, participants encountered this ethical dilemma through stories featuring their sibling (i.e., brother) as either the perpetrator or victim in various moral scenarios. Subsequently, they provided their moral judgements (i.e., moral acceptability and perceived transgression) and made decisions (i.e., willingness and difficulty to disclose what the agent did to the police) regarding the perpetrator. The manipulation of family membership was integrated into the moral scenarios, which were crafted based on whether the perpetrator had malicious intent and whether those intentions resulted in a harmful outcome (i.e., intentional harm, failed attempts to harm, accidental harm, and a harmless/baseline). While we initially expected that individuals would exhibit favouritism towards their brother when harmful intent or outcomes were absent, our findings revealed that both agent/victim identities (brother/stranger) and intent-outcome-based moral scenarios had an additive effect on both measures of moral judgement. This suggests that the family favouring effect was observed across all intent-outcome scenarios, with a slightly more pronounced effect when the brother accidentally harmed a stranger compared to a stranger accidentally harming the brother. Regarding moral decisions, participants demonstrated a willingness to disclose what they witnessed regardless of their familial relationship with the agent or victim, but it was universally perceived as a difficult decision to make. Together, our results underscore the context-specific nature of moral judgements and decisions, emphasising the significant impact of family members when they are involved as moral characters.
伤害他人是一种道德违反，但帮助家庭成员是道德上的义务。在这项研究中，参与者通过以兄弟姐妹（即兄弟）为加害者或受害者的各种道德情境的故事遇到了这种道德困境。随后，他们对加害者提供了道德判断（即道德可接受性和感知的违规）并做出了决定（即是否愿意并难以向警方披露代理人的所作所为）。家庭关系的操纵被整合到道德情境中，这些情境是根据加害者是否有恶意意图以及这些意图是否导致有害后果（即故意伤害、未能伤害、意外伤害和无害/基线）来设计的。虽然我们最初预计在没有恶意意图或结果时，个人会偏向于他们的兄弟，但我们的发现表明，代理/受害者身份（兄弟/陌生人）和基于意图-结果的道德情境对道德判断的两个衡量标准都有累加效应。这表明，家庭偏好效应在所有意图-结果情境中都存在，当兄弟意外伤害陌生人时，这种效应比陌生人意外伤害兄弟时更为明显。关于道德决策，参与者表示无论他们与代理人或受害者的家庭关系如何，都愿意披露他们所看到的情况，但普遍认为这是一个困难的决定。总之，我们的研究结果强调了道德判断和决策的具体情境性质，强调了当家庭成员作为道德角色参与时，他们会产生重大影响。
