PSA [006] - Moral thinking across the world

Research on moral reasoning is centered around moral dilemmas in which deontological perspectives (emphasizing individual rights) are in conflict with consequentialist reasoning (also referred to as utilitarian; following the greater good). A central finding of this field is that people in certain situations are more likely do go with deontological considerations, while in other cases they are more likely to decide based on consequentialist reasons. In their seminal article, Greene et al. (2009) tried to investigate the effect of situational and psychological factors (e.g., intent of the agent, or physical contact between the agent and victim) on people’s moral decisions, but their work could not explore the effect of a potentially important component: culture. Therefore, the goal of the present research proposal is to empirically test the universality of utilitarian and deontological responding by directly replicating Greene et al.’s experiments on non-WEIRD samples as well as to explore the influence of culture and economic status on moral reasoning.

道德推理的研究聚焦于道德困境，其中德性论视角（强调个人权利）与后果论推理（亦称功利主义；遵循最大善）相互冲突。该领域的一项核心发现是，在特定情境下，人们更有可能基于德性论考量的结果作出决定，而在其他情况下，他们则更倾向于依据后果论的原因进行决策。在Greene等人（2009年）的里程碑式文章中，试图探究情境和心理因素（例如，行为者的意图或行为者与受害者之间的身体接触）对人们道德决策的影响，但其研究未能探讨一个可能具有重要意义的组成部分：文化。因此，本项研究提案的目标是通过对非WEIRD样本直接复制Greene等人实验的方式，实证检验功利主义和德性论反应的普适性，同时探究文化及经济状况对道德推理的影响。