Sacrificial utilitarian judgments do reflect concern for the greater good: Clarification via process dissociation and the judgments of philosophers

Intense research work and literature review have indicated that people’s sacrificial utilitarian judgments usually reflect moral concerns about minimizing harm.

We’ve all heard stories of events where people make smaller sacrifices to avoid a larger catastrophe. While this may seem straightforward, there are situations where sacrificing one person saves many others. The sacrifice decision often falls on a third party, who faces a profound dilemma and immense moral conflict. In psychology, we refer to this as trolley-type dilemmas.

Researchers from the Harvard University have employed sacrificial trolley-type dilemmas (where harmful actions promote the greater good) to model the influences that are competing a moral judgment: affective reactions to causing harm that motivate characteristically deontological judgments (the morality of an action depends on the intrinsic nature of an action, as per example, it is wrong to cause harm to others regardless of the consequences) and deliberate cost-benefit reasoning in turn motivates characteristically utilitarian judgments (better to save more lives).

Sacrificial Judgments Revisited: Aligning with Moral Concerns Over Antisociality

Kahane, Everett, Earp, Farias, and Savulescu (2015) argued that sacrificial judgments primarily reflect antisociality rather than true utilitarianism. Their research suggests that individuals making these judgments are motivated by factors unrelated to genuine utilitarian principles. However, subsequent studies have challenged this view by highlighting that Kahane et al.’s definition of utilitarian judgment differs from other established definitions. These further investigations emphasize that sacrificial judgments may indeed align with utilitarian concerns, such as minimizing harm for the greater good, rather than purely reflecting antisocial tendencies. This ongoing debate underscores the complexity of understanding moral decision-making.

The psychologists of Harvard introduced a concept of a five-level taxonomy of “utilitarian judgment” and explained its longstanding usage. This suggests judgments are utilitarian due to their focus on the greater good, regardless of judges’ motivations or philosophies. Process dissociation has also shown antisociality predicts, reduced deontological inclinations and not increased utilitarian inclinations. Critically, the evidence shows that people’s sacrificial utilitarian judgments reflect moral concerns about minimizing harm.