Information technology may be able to help people become better ethical decision makers. This paper explores philosophical and psychological issues underlying the design of a moral dilemma support system (MDSS). The effects of schemas, decision strategies, social information, and emotions on dilemma analysis are considered. MDSS features that would help people understand moral dilemmas, choose ...

Neuroimaging research examining correlates of adolescent behavioral maturation has focused largely on issues related to higher cognitive development. Currently few studies have explored neural correlates of emotional reactivity in adolescent groups. In this study, we sought to examine the nature of posterior cingulate activation during situations of moral dilemma in normal adolescents. We focus...

One of the central assumptions of Kohlberg's theory of moral development--that moral judgment is organized in structures of the whole--was examined. Thirty men and 30 women were given 2 dilemmas from Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview, a 3rd involving prosocial behavior, and a 4th involving impaired driving. Half the Ss responded to the prosocial and impaired-driving dilemmas from the perspect...

Research on moral dilemma judgments has been fundamentally shaped by the distinction between utilitarianism and deontology. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consequences; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consistency with moral norms. To identify the processes under...

Studied the relationship between social motivation and approaches to moral decision making, and also the emotions people experience in real life moral dilemmas. 44 students were interviewed about a moral dilemma that they had faced in the past. Social motivation was measured with Emmons’ (1989) idiographic personal strivings method. Intimacy motivation was related to a preference for making dec...

We investigated whether and why the use of a foreign language influences moral judgment. We studied the trolley and footbridge dilemmas, which propose an action that involves killing one individual to save five. In line with prior work, the use of a foreign language increased the endorsement of such consequentialist actions for the footbridge dilemma, but not for the trolley dilemma. But contra...

In three studies we found further evidence for a previously discovered Human-Robot (HR) asymmetry in moral judgments: that people blame robots more for inaction than action in a moral dilemma but blame humans more for action than inaction in the identical dilemma (where inaction allows four persons to die and action sacrifices one to save the four). Importantly, we found that people’s represent...

The aims of this systematic review were to determine: (a) which brain areas are consistently more active when making (i) moral response decisions, defined as choosing a response to a moral dilemma, or deciding whether to accept a proposed solution, or (ii) moral evaluations, defined as judging the appropriateness of another's actions in a moral dilemma, rating moral statements as right or wrong...

MUTUAL ADVANTAGE CONTRACTARIANS TRY to show that moral principles are best understood as rational limitations on our choices. These limitations are derived from non-moral principles of rational choice. To act rationally would thus be to act morally and vice versa. Consequently, there would be no conflict between individual utility maximisation and morality. The main advantage of this project is...

We present the results of a simulation of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma where some agents behave rationally and others have moral sentiments towards those from the same social group. They suggest that in societies where agents can possess such characteristics, to behave rationally, in the usual sense in Game Theory~ is not the best attitude for good performance in the long run, both individua...