Spatial Distance, Availability of Means, and Moral Obligation Judgments
نویسندگان
چکیده
In the present research we analyze the interrelations of spatial distance and efficaciousness in helping needy others, and we investigate how these factors affect our judgments of moral helping obligations. The main question is under which conditions the location of an agent’s means of helping relative to a victim is regarded as morally relevant. We develop a new experimental design that allows us to test our hypotheses concurrently in both separate and joint evaluation modes using a constant procedure across groups. We find that spatial proximity of an agent’s means to a victim increases people’s sense of obligation only to the extent to which it is indicative of increased efficaciousness or personal involvement.
منابع مشابه
Deconfounding distance effects in judgments of moral obligation.
A heavily disputed question of moral philosophy is whether spatial distance between agent and victim is normatively relevant for the degree of obligation to help strangers in need. In this research, we focus on the associated descriptive question whether increased distance does in fact reduce individuals' sense of helping obligation. One problem with empirically answering this question is that ...
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