Lemli Benjamin A, Landy Justin F
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States of America.
Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, United States.
PLoS One. 2025 Apr 29;20(4):e0319233. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0319233. eCollection 2025.
In medical ethics, there is often a tradeoff between maximizing treatment efficacy and alleviating patient suffering. We adapt methods from consumer behavior research to examine whether ethicality judgments of medical treatments that vary on these dimensions exhibit preference reversals across tasks and evaluation modes. Specifically, we present participants with pairs of treatments that symmetrically dominate one another: one is more effective, while the other improves patients' quality-of-life. Across three studies (total N = 500), we demonstrate classic preference reversals in lay medical ethics judgments: participants prioritized efficacy over quality-of-life concerns in matching tasks more than choice and rating tasks, in between-subjects (Study 1) and within-subjects (Study 2) designs, and in joint evaluation more than sequential evaluation (Study 3). We interpret these findings in light of previous research on preference reversals in other domains and discuss implications for healthcare and moral psychology.
在医学伦理学中，最大化治疗效果与减轻患者痛苦之间常常需要权衡。我们采用消费者行为研究中的方法，来检验在这些维度上有所不同的医学治疗的伦理判断，是否在任务和评估模式之间表现出偏好逆转。具体而言，我们向参与者展示相互对称占优的治疗方案对：一种方案更有效，而另一种方案能改善患者的生活质量。在三项研究（总样本量N = 500）中，我们证明了在普通医学伦理判断中存在经典的偏好逆转：在匹配任务中，参与者对疗效的重视超过了对生活质量的关注，这一情况在主体间设计（研究1）和主体内设计（研究2）中均有体现，并且在联合评估中比顺序评估更明显（研究3）。我们根据先前在其他领域关于偏好逆转的研究来解释这些发现，并讨论其对医疗保健和道德心理学的启示。
