Department of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Centre for Research on Self and Identity, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 23;19(10):e0298842. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298842. eCollection 2024.
Five experiments (N = 2,204) examined responses to a realistic moral dilemma: a military pilot must decide whether to bomb a dangerous enemy target, also killing a bystander. Few people endorsed bombing when the bystander was an innocent civilian; however, when the bystander's identity was unknown, over twice as many people endorsed the bombing. Follow-up studies tested boundary conditions and found the effect to extend beyond modern-day conflicts in the Middle East, showing a similar pattern of judgment for a fictional war. Bombing endorsement was predicted by attitudes towards total war, the theory that there should be no distinction between military and civilian targets in wartime conflict. Bombing endorsement was lower for UK compared to US participants due to differences in total war attitudes. This work has implications for conflicts where unidentified bystanders are common by revealing a potentially deadly bias: people often assume unidentified bystanders are guilty unless proven innocent.
五个实验（N=2204）考察了人们对一个现实道德困境的反应：一名军事飞行员必须决定是否轰炸一个危险的敌方目标，同时也会杀死一名旁观者。当旁观者是无辜平民时，很少有人支持轰炸；然而，当旁观者的身份未知时，支持轰炸的人数是前者的两倍多。后续研究测试了边界条件，发现这种判断模式不仅限于现代中东冲突，对于虚构的战争也呈现出类似的判断模式。对总体战的态度预测了轰炸的支持，总体战理论认为在战时冲突中不应该区分军事和平民目标。与美国参与者相比，英国参与者的轰炸支持率较低，这是由于他们对总体战的态度存在差异。这项工作对于那些常见不明身份旁观者的冲突具有启示意义，因为它揭示了一种潜在的致命偏见：人们通常会假设不明身份的旁观者有罪，除非有证据证明他们无罪。
