Authors
Jim AC Everett, Nadira S Faber, Julian Savulescu, Molly J Crockett
Publication date
2018/11/1
Journal
Journal of experimental social psychology
Volume
79
Pages
200-216
Publisher
Academic Press
Description
Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject harming one person to save many others than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker – but still evident – preferences in the domain of …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
JAC Everett, NS Faber, J Savulescu, MJ Crockett - Journal of experimental social psychology, 2018