Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology

Moral-dilemma judgments by individuals and groups: Are many heads really more utilitarian than one?

Moral dilemmas often involve a conflict between action-options that maximize outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) and inaction-options that conform to moral norms (deontology). Previous research suggests that, compared to individuals, groups show stronger support for outcome-maximizing actions that violate moral norms. The current study used a computational modeling approach to investigate whether this difference is driven by (1) stronger sensitivity to consequences, (2) weaker sensitivity to moral norms, or (3) weaker action aversion in moral-dilemma judgments made by groups. The results suggest that groups show a stronger sensitivity to consequences than individuals. Groups and individuals did not differ in terms of their sensitivity to moral norms and their general action aversion. The findings challenge the idea that groups are less action averse and less concerned about violating moral norms than individuals and instead suggest that group decisions are more strongly guided by outcomes for the greater good.

People expect artificial moral advisors to be more utilitarian and distrust utilitarian moral advisors

As machines powered by artificial intelligence increase in their technological capacities, there is a growing interest in the theoretical and practical idea of artificial moral advisors (AMAs): systems powered by artificial intelligence that are explicitly designed to assist humans in making ethical decisions. Across four pre-registered studies (total N = 2604) we investigated how people perceive and trust artificial moral advisors compared to human advisors. Extending previous work on algorithmic aversion, we show that people have a significant aversion to AMAs (vs humans) giving moral advice, while also showing that this is particularly the case when advisors - human and AI alike - gave advice based on utilitarian principles. We find that participants expect AI to make utilitarian decisions, and that even when participants agreed with a decision made by an AMA, they still expected to disagree with an AMA more than a human in future. Our findings suggest challenges in the adoption of artificial moral advisors, and particularly those who draw on and endorse utilitarian principles - however normatively justifiable.

Utilitarian psychology and influenza vaccine acceptance in the United Arab Emirates: implications for moral education and public policy

Seasonal influenza is still a challenge in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There is consensus that the most effective way to address this problem is through yearly vaccination campaigns. Despite governmental efforts to make the influenza vaccine available, there remains some hesitancy among the population. Previous research has focused on the conspiratorial and disinformation aspects of vaccine hesitancy. In this article, we posit that, apart from those factors, moral psychology considerations also play a role in determining whether people accept the influenza vaccine. University students in the UAE were assessed in their knowledge of how vaccines work. They were also assessed in their level of adherence to utilitarian moral psychology. Results came out showing that while vaccine knowledge plays a role in the decision to receive the seasonal influenza shot, impartial beneficence (as a dimension of utilitarian psychology) plays a greater role. This has implications for moral education, communication and public policy in the UAE, as an introduction to utilitarian principles may serve the purpose of curbing vaccine hesitancy in the nation.

Beyond Trolleyology: The CNI Model of Moral-Dilemma Responses

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

How do people make judgments about actions that violate moral norms yet maximize the greater good (e.g., sacrificing the well-being of a small number of people for the well-being of a larger number of people)? Research on this question has been criticized for relying on highly artificial scenarios and for conflating multiple distinct factors underlying responses in moral dilemmas. The current article reviews research that used a computational modeling approach to disentangle the roles of multiple distinct factors in responses to plausible moral dilemmas based on real-world events. By disentangling sensitivity to consequences, sensitivity to moral norms, and general preference for inaction versus action in responses to realistic dilemmas, the reviewed work provides a more nuanced understanding of how people make judgments about the right course of action in moral dilemmas.

Measuring Morality: An Examination of the Moral Foundation Questionnaire's Factor Structure

Moral foundations theory proposes five domains of morality-harm, fairness, loyalty, purity, and authority. Endorsement of these moral domains is assessed by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), a 30-item scale that has undergone intense measurement scrutiny. Across five samples (N = 464,229), we show greatly improved model fit using a Bifactor model that accounts for two kinds of items in the MFQ: judgment and relevance. We add to this space by demonstrating how using this improved measurement structure changes the strength of correlations of the moral foundations with numerous attitudes, cognitive styles, and moral decision-making. Future research should continue to identify what, if anything, the relevance and judgment factors might substantively capture over and above the substantive domains of moral foundations. In the meantime, we recommend that researchers use the Bifactor model for its improved model structure, rather than dropping the relevant items as some have proposed.

Close relationship partners of impartial altruists do not report diminished relationship quality and are similarly altruistic

Impartial altruism is often considered a moral ideal but is rare in practice. Instead, generosity typically decreases as social distance increases, a phenomenon termed social discounting. Most people prefer this partiality in their close relationships and view impartial altruists as poorer relationship partners. This suggests real-world impartial altruism may be rare because it reduces-or is perceived to reduce-the quality of close relationships. To investigate this, we compared patterns of generosity and social relationship quality in a rare sample of individuals who had engaged in extraordinary real-world impartial altruism (altruistic kidney donors; n = 59) and their closest friend or family member (n = 59) to controls (n = 71) and their closest others (n = 71). We designed a direct test of third-party social discounting, which experimentally confirmed real-world altruists' impartiality, finding that they are more likely than controls to split resources evenly between close and distant others rather than favoring close others. However, we found no statistically significant association between impartial altruism and social relationship quality. Instead, we found that altruists' close others also show more impartiality than controls. This suggests value homophily (shared moral values) among altruists, which may represent a protective factor for close relationships in the context of impartial altruism.

Does Momentary Outcome-Based Reflection Shape Bioethical Views? A Pre-Post Intervention Design

Many bioliberals endorse broadly consequentialist frameworks in normative ethics, implying that a progressive stance on matters of bioethical controversy could stem from outcome-based reasoning. This raises an intriguing empirical prediction: encouraging outcome-based reflection could yield a shift toward bioliberal views among nonexperts as well. To evaluate this hypothesis, we identified empirical premises that underlie moral disagreements on seven divisive issues (e.g., vaccines, abortion, or genetically modified organisms). In exploratory and confirmatory experiments, we assessed whether people spontaneously engage in outcome-based reasoning by asking how their moral views change after momentarily reflecting on the underlying empirical questions. Our findings indicate that momentary reflection had no overall treatment effect on the central tendency or the dispersion in moral attitudes when compared to prereflection measures collected 1 week prior. Autoregressive models provided evidence that participants engaged in consequentialist moral reasoning, but this self-guided reflection produced neither moral "progress" (shifts in the distributions' central tendency) nor moral "consensus" (reductions in their dispersion). These results imply that flexibility in people's search for empirical answers may limit the potential for outcome-based reflection to foster moral consensus.

Moral Future-Thinking: Does the Moral Circle Stand the Test of Time?

Humanity's long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (NTotal = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriented bias appears stronger for socially close compared with socially distant targets and for human targets relative to non-human animals and entities in nature. Individual differences, including longtermism beliefs and subjective imaginative vividness, predict greater concern for and obligation to the future. Likewise, concern and obligation predict greater future-oriented generosity. Our studies are among the first to explore moral considerations for targets across deep temporal expanses, reconcile conflicting evidence in the extant literature on moral judgment and future-thinking, and offer practical implications for bettering the shared societal future.

Being blind (or not) to scenarios used in sacrificial dilemmas: the influence of factual and contextual information on moral responses

Introduction

Traditionally, human morality has been largely studied with classical sacrificial dilemmas. A way to advance current understandings of moral judgment and decision-making may involve testing the impact of contexts that are made available to individuals presented with these archetypal dilemmas. This preliminary study focused on assessing whether the availability of factual and contextual information delivered through classical scenarios would change moral responses.

Method

A total of 334 participants were presented with sacrificial dilemmas either with a scenario or without a scenario before performing two moral tasks: one consisted in moral judgment (e.g., is it acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five?) and one was related to choice of action (e.g., would you sacrifice one person to save five?). In the condition with a scenario, participants were presented with a story describing the dilemma, its protagonists, their roles, the location and some background details of the situation, before answering to the two moral tasks. In the condition without a scenario, participants were only asked to perform the two moral tasks without any additional contextual elements usually provided by the scenario. Participants' emotions were also measured before and after completing the two moral tasks.

Results

The results indicated that the presence of a scenario did not affect moral judgments. However, the presence of a scenario significantly increased utilitarian action choices (i.e., sacrificing one person in the interest of saving a greater number) and this effect was partially mediated by an increase in the perceived plausibility of the sacrificial action. Regarding emotional reaction to dilemmas, no differences were observed between the two conditions, suggesting that emotions are mainly based on the two moral tasks.

Discussion

These findings underscore the value of carefully considering the role of factual and contextual information provided by the scenarios in moral dilemmas.

Family favouring effects across intent and outcome-based moral judgements and decisions

Doing harm is a moral violation, but helping a family member is morally obligatory. In this study, participants encountered this ethical dilemma through stories featuring their sibling (i.e., brother) as either the perpetrator or victim in various moral scenarios. Subsequently, they provided their moral judgements (i.e., moral acceptability and perceived transgression) and made decisions (i.e., willingness and difficulty to disclose what the agent did to the police) regarding the perpetrator. The manipulation of family membership was integrated into the moral scenarios, which were crafted based on whether the perpetrator had malicious intent and whether those intentions resulted in a harmful outcome (i.e., intentional harm, failed attempts to harm, accidental harm, and a harmless/baseline). While we initially expected that individuals would exhibit favouritism towards their brother when harmful intent or outcomes were absent, our findings revealed that both agent/victim identities (brother/stranger) and intent-outcome-based moral scenarios had an additive effect on both measures of moral judgement. This suggests that the family favouring effect was observed across all intent-outcome scenarios, with a slightly more pronounced effect when the brother accidentally harmed a stranger compared to a stranger accidentally harming the brother. Regarding moral decisions, participants demonstrated a willingness to disclose what they witnessed regardless of their familial relationship with the agent or victim, but it was universally perceived as a difficult decision to make. Together, our results underscore the context-specific nature of moral judgements and decisions, emphasising the significant impact of family members when they are involved as moral characters.

Advance Medical Decision-Making Differs Across First- and Third-Person Perspectives

BACKGROUND

Advance healthcare decision-making presumes that a prior treatment preference expressed with sufficient mental capacity ("T1 preference") should trump a contrary preference expressed after significant cognitive decline ("T2 preference"). This assumption is much debated in normative bioethics, but little is known about lay judgments in this domain. This study investigated participants' judgments about which preference should be followed, and whether these judgments differed depending on a first-person (deciding for one's future self) versus third-person (deciding for a friend or stranger) perspective.

METHODS

A vignette-based survey was conducted (N = 1445 US Americans; gender-balanced sample), in a 3 (relationship: self, best friend, stranger) × 2 (T1 preference: treat, do not treat) × 2 (T2 contrary preference: ambiguous, unambiguous) design.

RESULTS

Participants were more likely to defer to the incapacitated T2 preference of a third-party, while being more likely to insist on following their own T1 capacitated preference. Further, participants were more likely to conclude that others with substantial cognitive decline were still their "true selves," which correlated with increased deference to their T2 preferences.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings add to the growing evidence that lay intuitions concerning the ethical entitlement to have decisions respected are not only a function of cognition, as would be expected under many traditional bioethical accounts, but also depend on the relationship of the decision to the decision-maker's true self.

Psychopathic Traits and Utilitarian Moral Judgment Revisited

To provide deeper insights into the relationships between psychopathic traits and utilitarian moral judgment, we studied N = 702 adults using three psychopathy scales: (a) the Levenson's Self-report Psychopathy Scale; (b) the Psychopathic Personality Inventory; and (c) the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure; and three measures of utilitarian moral judgment: (a) trolley dilemmas; (b) the Consequences, Norms, and Inaction (CNI) model of moral decision-making; and (c) the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale. When using the traditional approach to moral judgment (i.e., trolley dilemmas, instrumental harm, traditional score from the CNI model), we found that higher levels of psychopathic traits were associated with a higher utilitarian tendency. When using the modeling approach, we found that a higher level of psychopathic traits was related to weaker sensitivity to moral norms and less action averse in morally problematic situations. In addition, we found negative associations between impartial beneficence and all psychopathy scores.

Applying process dissociation to self-sacrificial moral dilemmas: Extending the dual-process model

There is considerable evidence linking cognitive reflection with utilitarian judgments in dilemmas that involve sacrificing someone else for the greater good. However, the evidence is mixed on the question of whether cognitive reflection is associated with utilitarian judgments in self-sacrificial dilemmas. We employed process dissociation to extract a self-sacrificial utilitarian (SU) parameter, an altruism (A) parameter, an other-sacrificial (OU) utilitarian parameter, and a deontology (D) parameter. In Study 1, the cognitive reflection test (CRT) positively correlated with both SU and OU (replicated in Studies 2 and 4, pre-registered). In Study 2, we found that instructing participants to rely on reason increased SU and OU (replicated in Study 4, pre-registered). In Study 3, we found that SU and OU positively correlated with giving in the single-game version of the public goods game (replicated in Study 4, pre-registered), which provides behavioral validation that they are genuine moral tendencies. Together, these studies constitute strong cumulative evidence that SU and OU are both valid measures that are associated with reliance on cognitive reflection.

Socioemotional dysfunction and the greater good: a case study

Moral cognition has largely been studied via dilemmas in which making a utilitarian choice causes instrumental harm (negative dimension). Studies of utilitarianism link this behavior with socioemotional unresponsiveness. However, there is a positive dimension of utilitarianism in which one sacrifices the good of oneself or close others for the overall welfare. We measured utilitarian choices multidimensionally in a patient with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), incorporating dilemmas accounting for negative and positive dimensions. Despite socioemotional deficits our patient was highly utilitarian in the positive, dimension of utilitarianism. This case study challenges the tendency to automatically associate bvFTD with antisocial tendencies.

The Oxford Utilitarianism Scale: Psychometric properties of a French adaptation (OUS-Fr)

It is well established that one's sense of morality may be readily influenced by one's culture, education, and life situation. Very few psychometric tools are currently available to measure facets of human morality in different cultures. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to develop a French adaptation of the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS-Fr) and formally evaluate its validity. The OUS-Fr was developed through a process of back-translation and administered to a sample of 552 participants. Results from exploratory factor analyses revealed a bidimensional structure with satisfactory loadings that was then also supported in the confirmatory factor analysis check. The OUS-Fr scale demonstrated good psychometric properties, with acceptable internal consistency and coherent results in the convergent validity analyses. These findings contribute to morality measurement literature by providing evidence for the reliability and validity of the French adaptation of the OUS. The OUS-Fr can be viewed as a valuable tool for researchers and practitioners for assessing utilitarian tendencies within the French-speaking population, which could pave the way for cross-cultural understandings that are important for fully understanding the intricacies of human morality.

Developing an Ethical Perspectives Scale

Many theories hold that ethical perspectives inform moral judgments, but few such theories have corresponding individual difference scales. The present research aimed to develop an Ethical Perspectives Scale (EPS) reflecting specifically the five-perspective Markkula framework: utilitarianism; rights; fairness/justice; common good; and virtue. The authors wrote and progressively revised five sets of three items, each set intended to represent one and only one Markkula perspective, before obtaining responses from the present convenience sample (n = 621; 463 female, 157 male, 1 unspecified; Mage = 19.13, SD = 1.44) of university students. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO = 0.867) and Bartlett's sphericity tests (χ2 = 3211.5, p < .001) showed that the data were suitable for factor analysis. An EFA with Direct Oblimin rotation yielded a five-factor structure corresponding to the five Markkula perspectives. A CFA yielded satisfactory indices of fit (χ2(80) = 92.81, p = .155, CFI = 0.991, TLI = 0.989, SRMR = 0.039, RMSEA = 0.023, HI90 ≤ .001, and LO90 = 0.041). The five subscales displayed satisfactory internal consistency (M subscale α = .76). Responses from a separate student sample (n = 148) yielded satisfactory three-week test-retest reliability (M subscale r = .72). EPS sub-scales significantly predicted evaluations of contemporary moral dilemma decisions that involved drug legalization, free speech, and pandemic restrictions. The results were interpreted as promising first steps toward an EPS useful for future research and application.

The impact of generative artificial intelligence on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the potential impacts of generative AI on (mis)information and three information-intensive domains: work, education, and healthcare. Our goal is to highlight how generative AI could worsen existing inequalities while illuminating how AI may help mitigate pervasive social problems. In the information domain, generative AI can democratize content creation and access but may dramatically expand the production and proliferation of misinformation. In the workplace, it can boost productivity and create new jobs, but the benefits will likely be distributed unevenly. In education, it offers personalized learning, but may widen the digital divide. In healthcare, it might improve diagnostics and accessibility, but could deepen pre-existing inequalities. In each section, we cover a specific topic, evaluate existing research, identify critical gaps, and recommend research directions, including explicit trade-offs that complicate the derivation of a priori hypotheses. We conclude with a section highlighting the role of policymaking to maximize generative AI's potential to reduce inequalities while mitigating its harmful effects. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of existing policy frameworks in the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom, observing that each fails to fully confront the socioeconomic challenges we have identified. We propose several concrete policies that could promote shared prosperity through the advancement of generative AI. This article emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary collaborations to understand and address the complex challenges of generative AI.

Who gives? Characteristics of those who have taken the Giving What We Can pledge

OBJECTIVE

In the current project, we focus on another group of unusual altruists: people who have taken the Giving What We Can (GWWC) pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to charity. Our project aims to understand what is unique about this population.

BACKGROUND

Many people care about helping, but in recent years there has been a surge of research examining those whose moral concern for others goes far beyond that of the typical population. These unusual altruists (also termed extraordinary or extreme altruists or moral exemplars) make great personal sacrifices to help others-such as donating their kidneys to strangers or participating in COVID-19 vaccine challenge trials.

METHOD

In a global study (N = 536) we examine a number of cognitive and personality traits of GWWC pledgers and compare them to a country-matched comparison group.

RESULTS

In accordance with our predictions, GWWC pledgers were better at identifying fearful faces, more morally expansive and higher in actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition and two subscales of utilitarianism and, tentatively, lower in social dominance orientation. Against our predictions, they were lower in maximizing tendency. Finally, we found an inconclusive relationship between pledger status and empathy/compassion that we believe warrants further examination.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings offer initial insights into the characteristics that set apart those who have made the decision to donate a substantial portion of their income to help others.

The effect of cognitive load, ego depletion, induction and time restriction on moral judgments about sacrificial dilemmas: a meta-analysis

Greene's influential dual-process model of moral cognition (mDPM) proposes that when people engage in Type 2 processing, they tend to make consequentialist moral judgments. One important source of empirical support for this claim comes from studies that ask participants to make moral judgments while experimentally manipulating Type 2 processing. This paper presents a meta-analysis of the published psychological literature on the effect of four standard cognitive-processing manipulations (cognitive load; ego depletion; induction; time restriction) on moral judgments about sacrificial moral dilemmas [n = 44; k = 68; total N = 14, 003; M(N) = 194.5]. The overall pooled effect was in the direction predicted by the mDPM, but did not reach statistical significance. Restricting the dataset to effect sizes from (high-conflict) personal sacrificial dilemmas (a type of sacrificial dilemma that is often argued to be best suited for tests of the mDPM) also did not yield a significant pooled effect. The same was true for a meta-analysis of the subset of studies that allowed for analysis using the process dissociation approach [n = 8; k = 12; total N = 2, 577; M(N) = 214.8]. I argue that these results undermine one important line of evidence for the mDPM and discuss a series of potential objections against this conclusion.

Bilinguals on the footbridge: the role of foreign-language proficiency in moral decision making

Socio-cognitive research on bilinguals points to a moral foreign-language effect (MFLE), with more utilitarian choices (e.g., sacrificing someone to save more people) for moral dilemmas presented in the second language (L2) relative to the first language. Yet, inconsistent results highlight the influence of subject-level variables, including a critical underexplored factor: L2 proficiency (L2p). Here we provide a systematic review of 57 bilingualism studies on moral dilemmas, showing that L2p rarely modulates responses to impersonal dilemmas, but it does impact personal dilemmas (with MFLEs proving consistent at intermediate L2p levels but unsystematic at high L2p levels). We propose an empirico-theoretical framework to conceptualize such patterns, highlighting the impact of L2p on four affective mediating factors: mental imagery, inhibitory control, prosocial behavior and numerical processing. Finally, we outline core challenges for the field. These insights open new avenues at the crossing of bilingualism and social cognition research.

Ethics of Nudging in the COVID-19 Crisis and the Necessary Return to the Principles of Shared Decision Making: A Critical Review

Nudging, a controversial technique for modifying people's behavior in a predictable way, is claimed to preserve freedom of choice while simultaneously influencing it. Nudging had been largely confined to situations such as promoting healthy eating choices but has been employed in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis in a shift towards measures that involve significantly less choice, such as shoves and behavioral prods. Shared decision making (SDM), a method for direct involvement and autonomy, is an alternative approach to communicate risk. Predominantly peer-reviewed scientific publications from standard literature databases like PubMed, PsycInfo, and Psyndex were evaluated in a narrative review. The so-called fear nudges, as well as the dissemination of strongly emotionalizing or moralizing messages can lead to intense psycho-physical stress. The use of these nudges by specialized units during the COVID-19 pandemic generated a societal atmosphere of fear that precipitated a deterioration of the mental and physical health of the population. Major recommendations of the German COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) study, which are based on elements of nudging and coercive measures, do not comply with ethical principles, basic psychological principles, or evidence-based data. SDM was misused in the COVID-19 crisis, which helped to achieve one-sided goals of governments. The emphasis on utilitarian thinking is criticized and the unethical behavior of decision makers is explained by both using the concept of moral disengagement and the maturity level of coping strategies. There should be a return to an open-ended, democratic, and pluralistic scientific debate without using nudges. It is therefore necessary to return to the origins of SDM.

Moral reasoning behind the veil of ignorance: An investigation into perspective-taking accessibility in the context of autonomous vehicles

Perspective-taking (PT) accessibility has been recognized as an important factor in affecting moral reasoning, also playing a non-trivial role in moral investigation towards autonomous vehicles (AVs). A new proposal to deepen this effect leverages the principles of the veil of ignorance (VOI), as a moral reasoning device aimed to control self-interested decisions by limiting the access to specific perspectives and to potentially biased information. Throughout two studies, we deepen the role of VOI reasoning in the moral perception of AVs, disclosing personal and contingent information progressively throughout the experiment. With the use of the moral trilemma paradigm, two different VOI conditions were operationalized, inspired by the Original Position theory by John Rawls and the Equiprobability Model by John Harsanyi. Evidence suggests a significant role of VOI reasoning in affecting moral reasoning, which seems not independent from the order in which information is revealed. Coherently, a detrimental effect of self-involvement on utilitarian behaviours was detected. These results highlight the importance of considering PT accessibility and self-involvement when investigating moral attitudes towards AVs, since it can help the intelligibility of general concerns and hesitations towards this new technology.

Foreign and Regional Languages Make You Less Deontological

Previous studies have shown that foreign languages can change people's responses to moral dilemmas, making them more likely to choose harm (e.g., to kill one individual in order to save a few lives). Regional languages have also been shown to make sacrificial choices more likely. Regional languages are typically acquired early and used routinely among family and acquaintances, thus differing from foreign languages that are typically acquired later and used rather sporadically. Using a process dissociation procedure, we show in the present study that regional and foreign languages weaken the contribution of the deontological view in similar ways. Furthermore, the effects of both languages were modulated by proficiency, so that less proficient bilinguals showed a stronger decrease of the deontological tendency. These similarities suggest that the effects induced by both languages stem from what these languages have in common. Both languages are not experienced in contexts critical in forging moral views (e.g., public institutions, media, schools). We propose that the effects of foreign and regional languages stem from the lack of experience in such contexts.

Explicit discrimination and ingroup favoritism, but no implicit biases in hypothetical triage decisions during COVID-19

Disturbingly realistic triage scenarios during the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity for studying discrimination in moral reasoning. Biases and favoritism do not need to be explicit and overt, but can remain implicit and covert. In addition to assessing laypeople's propensity for engaging in overt discrimination, the present study examines whether they reveal implicit biases through seemingly fair random allocations. We present a cross-sectional online study comprising 6 timepoints and a total of 2296 participants. Each individual evaluated 19 hypothetical scenarios that provide an allocation dilemma between two patients who are in need of ventilation and differ only in one focal feature. Participants could either allocate the last ventilator to a patient, or opt for random allocation to express impartiality. Overall, participants exhibited clear biases for the patient who was expected to be favored based on health factors, previous ethical or caretaking behaviors, and in-group favoritism. If one patient had been pre-allocated care, a higher probability of keeping the ventilator for the favored patient indicates persistent favoritism. Surprisingly, the absence of an asymmetry in random allocations indicates the absence of covert discrimination. Our results demonstrate that laypeople's hypothetical triage decisions discriminate overtly and show explicit biases.

Within your rights: Dissociating wrongness and permissibility in moral judgement

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgement of permissibility and wrongness is relatively scarce. Across four experiments (N = 1438), we show that people judge that some behaviours can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgements track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgements of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways.

Instrumental goals shape EU citizens' attitudes to the Russia-Ukraine war over time

The European Union (EU) legislation suggests that EU member states progressively adopt and implement policies that are primarily in line with the broader European interests, and secondarily with specific national interests. Yet, citizens from various EU member-states often oppose these EU directives and adopt attitudes that favour national interests. The current study investigates whether EU citizens progressively comply with-or digress from-the directives of the superordinate EU group during the Russia-Ukraine war. In a two-wave study we investigated the role of instrumental reasons (i.e., maximisation of material gain) to cooperate with an EU outgroup, namely Russia, in Greeks' (an EU member state) compliance with the EU directives over time during the Russia-Ukraine war. We hypothesised and found that instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia: (a) encourage EU citizens to support digressing from EU directives and (b) predict decreased identification with the superordinate identity of EU over time. Moreover, since NATO's approach to the Russian invasion closely mirrors that of the EU, we further investigated the effects of instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia on Greeks' identification with a different superordinate group, namely NATO. Results were largely similar to those we obtained when focusing on EU as a superordinate group.

Vaccine Nationalism Counterintuitively Erodes Public Trust in Leaders

Global access to resources like vaccines is key for containing the spread of infectious diseases. However, wealthy countries often pursue nationalistic policies, stockpiling doses rather than redistributing them globally. One possible motivation behind vaccine nationalism is a belief among policymakers that citizens will mistrust leaders who prioritize global needs over domestic protection. In seven experiments (total N = 4,215 adults), we demonstrate that such concerns are misplaced: Nationally representative samples across multiple countries with large vaccine surpluses (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and United States) trusted redistributive leaders more than nationalistic leaders-even the more nationalistic participants. This preference generalized across different diseases and manifested in both self-reported and behavioral measures of trust. Professional civil servants, however, had the opposite intuition and predicted higher trust in nationalistic leaders, and a nonexpert sample also failed to predict higher trust in redistributive leaders. We discuss how policymakers' inaccurate intuitions might originate from overestimating others' self-interest.

The role of empathy in trolley problems and variants: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The role of empathy in morality is a subject of ongoing scientific debate due to the lack of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on this topic. To address this gap, we conducted a PRISMA-based systematic quantitative review to investigate the role of empathy in moral judgements, decision-making, and inclinations using trolley problems and variants, which are popular types of moral dilemmas that explore utilitarianism and deontology. We searched for articles in four databases (PsycINFO, Pubmed, WorldWideScience, and Scopus) and performed citation searches. Out of 661 records, we selected 34 that studied the associations between empathy and moral judgements, moral decision-making, and/or moral inclinations. Six meta-analyses and systematic reviews of these records consistently showed small to moderate associations between affective empathy and these moral parameters, particularly in personal moral dilemmas involving intentional harm (although some approaches highlighted more complex associations between these parameters). Regarding other empathy domains, most studies found limited or insignificant links between cognitive empathy domains and moral judgements, decision-making, and inclinations. We discuss the nuances and implications of these results.

Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women

Scientific and organizational interventions often involve trade-offs whereby they benefit some but entail costs to others (i.e., instrumental harm; IH). We hypothesized that the gender of the persons incurring those costs would influence intervention endorsement, such that people would more readily support interventions inflicting IH onto men than onto women. We also hypothesized that women would exhibit greater asymmetries in their acceptance of IH to men versus women. Three experimental studies (two pre-registered) tested these hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 granted support for these predictions using a variety of interventions and contexts. Study 3 tested a possible boundary condition of these asymmetries using contexts in which women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice more than men: caring for infants, children, the elderly, and the ill. Even in these traditionally female contexts, participants still more readily accepted IH to men than women. Findings indicate people (especially women) are less willing to accept instrumental harm befalling women (vs. men). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications and limitations of our findings.

Decision Making in Moral Judgment Context is Modulated by Individual Metacognition

Metacognition refers to the human capacity to access and monitor one's own mental states. Recent research suggests that this capacity expands to the social world, e.g., when individuals explicitly share their cognitive processes with others. Additionally, metacognition is also linked to cognitive flexibility, and the latter to ideologically radical behaviors. Indeed, the absence of control over one's own mental activity could be at the base of different phenomena linked to social cognition. We investigate the metacognitive capacity of individuals in relation to the radicality with which they make a moral choice (utilitarian vs. deontological). For this purpose, 76 participants were submitted to 24 hypothetical situations, with the aim of evaluating the consistency (i.e., the radicality) of their moral choices. Then, in an independent experimental session, we evaluated the participants' metacognitive efficiency. We managed to demonstrate that individual metacognition scores are correlated with the radicality of a moral choice. We discussed the impact and relevance of metacognition in ecological contexts, particularly where subjective evaluation of the environment involves individual choices with social consequences.

Moral reasoning through the eyes of persons with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Introduction

Persons with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) can exhibit apparently antisocial behaviors. An example is their tendency to adopt utilitarian choices in sacrificial moral dilemmas, i.e. harmful actions to promote overall welfare. Moral cognition models interpret such tendencies as deriving from a lack of emotional engagement and selective impairment in prosocial sentiments.

Methods

We applied a qualitative approach to test those theoretical assumptions and to further explore the emotional experiences and values of people with bvFTD while they contemplate moral scenarios. We conducted semistructured interviews with 14 participants: 7 persons with bvFTD and 7 older healthy controls. Transcripts were coded using ATLAS.ti 5.0.

Results

During the moral reasoning task, persons with bvFTD reported more positive emotions than negative and showed significantly less cognitive precision in their moral reasoning compared to controls. Persons with bvFTD also organized their choices predominantly around kindness and altruism, and their responses reflected higher rule compliance. Our study showed that bvFTD persons' utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas did not arise from an emotionally disengaged or antisocial perspective. Instead, they were underpinned by positive emotionality and prosocial values.

Discussion

These findings enrich current understandings of moral cognition and highlight the importance of incorporating mixed methods approaches in dementia research that take into consideration the viewpoint of cognitively impaired individuals.

Contrasting two models of utilitarian reasoning

One influential framework for examining human moral cognition has been a dual process model, in which utilitarian judgment (e.g., infliction of harm for the greater good) is associated with cognitive control processes, while non-utilitarian judgment (e.g., avoiding such harms) is associated with emotional, automatic processes. Another framework of moral cognition, the two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology, posits that utilitarian choices may reflect either instrumental harm, i.e., inflicting harm on an individual for the greater good; or impartial beneficence, i.e., impartially and altruistically acting for the benefit of the overall welfare. We evaluated preregistered hypotheses (https://osf.io/m425d) derived from these models of moral cognition in a sample of 275 neurologically healthy older adults. Our results suggest that both the dual process and two-dimensional models provided insights regarding utilitarian reasoning, including three cardinal domains of conflict between utilitarianism and common-sense morality: agent-centered permissions, special obligations, and personal rights. One prediction of the dual process-based model was supported by our findings, with higher emotionality associated with decreased endorsement of utilitarian judgments (b = - 0.12, p < .001). We also found partial support for the two-dimensional model, as utilitarian judgments about dilemmas involving agent-centered permissions and personal rights were dissociated; however, both sets of judgments were associated with utilitarian judgments involving special obligations (p < .001 and p = .008, respectively). We propose that our findings, with support for some elements of the dual process and two-dimensional models, can be integrated into a revised two-dimensional model of utilitarian judgment as including impartial beneficence and acceptance of attributable harms.

Do Moral Judgments in Moral Dilemmas Make One More Inclined to Choose a Medical Degree?

The role of moral intuitions and moral judgments has become increasingly prominent in educational and academic choices. The present research aims to examine if the moral judgments elicited in sacrificial trolley dilemmas have a distinct pattern for the decisions made by junior medical students, in comparison to those of senior high school students. We work with this sample because it represents the population out of which medical students are recruited in the case of Bucharest, Romania. Our findings show that moral judgments are indeed a significant predictor for a respondent's status as medical students. This result, albeit with limitations, bears multiple practical implications, from developing empirically informed medical ethics courses in medical schools to evidence-based policy designs which consider factors such as morality alongside financial outcomes and incentives.

Trolleys, crashes, and perception-a survey on how current autonomous vehicles debates invoke problematic expectations

Ongoing debates about ethical guidelines for autonomous vehicles mostly focus on variations of the 'Trolley Problem'. Using variations of this ethical dilemma in preference surveys, possible implications for autonomous vehicles policy are discussed. In this work, we argue that the lack of realism in such scenarios leads to limited practical insights. We run an ethical preference survey for autonomous vehicles by including more realistic features, such as time pressure and a non-binary decision option. Our results indicate that such changes lead to different outcomes, calling into question how the current outcomes can be generalized. Additionally, we investigate the framing effects of the capabilities of autonomous vehicles and indicate that ongoing debates need to set realistic expectations on autonomous vehicle challenges. Based on our results, we call upon the field to re-frame the current debate towards more realistic discussions beyond the Trolley Problem and focus on which autonomous vehicle behavior is considered not to be acceptable, since a consensus on what the right solution is, is not reachable.

Moral, self-interested, and social motivation each predict compliance with social distancing rules: utilitarianism is an indirect positive predictor

BACKGROUND

Social distancing rules have proven to be essential in reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, we can optimise these rules if we identify factors which predict compliance. Thus, in this study we investigated whether compliance with distancing rules is predicted by whether an individual is motivated by moral, self-interested, or social reasons. We also investigated the impact of an individual's utilitarian orientation both on compliance itself and on reasons for compliance.

METHODS

Our sample consisted of 301 participants recruited from four US states - California, Oregon, Mississippi, and Alabama - who completed an anonymous online survey. Six vignettes describing hypothetical social distancing rules were developed for the study. Participants indicated (i) how likely they were to violate each hypothetical distancing rule, (ii) how morally wrong violating each rule would be, (iii) how much risk of contracting COVID-19 they would tolerate in order to violate each rule, and (iv) how much social condemnation they would tolerate in order to violate each rule. Based on these responses, we gauged each participant's overall degree of compliance with social distancing rules as well as the extent to which each participant's compliance is motivated by moral, self-interested, and social reasons. We also measured other variables that could affect compliance including personality, level of religiosity, and inclination to engage in utilitarian reasoning. Multiple regression and exploratory structural equation modelling were used to determine predictors of compliance with social distancing rules.

RESULTS

We found that moral, self-interested, and social motivation each positively predicted compliance, with self-interested motivation being the strongest predictor. Furthermore, utilitarian orientation indirectly predicted compliance, with moral, self-interested, and social motivation as positive mediating factors. No controlled covariates (personality factors, religiosity, political orientation, or other background variables) predicted compliance.

CONCLUSION

These findings have implications not only for the design of social distancing rules but also for efforts to ensure vaccine uptake. Governments need to consider how to harness moral, self-interested, and social motivation to promote compliance, perhaps by co-opting utilitarian reasoning, which positively influences these motivational forces.

Increased levels of autistic traits are associated with atypical moral judgments

Despite evidence often showing differences between groups with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and neurotypical controls in moral judgment, the precise nature of these differences has been difficult to establish. At least two reasons for this are (1) that ASD (and its associated characteristics) is difficult to define and (2) that morality, and the inclinations that undergird it, are hard to measure empirically. These challenges have made conclusive associations between ASD and particular patterns of moral judgment hard to come by. Thus, in the current study, participants levels of a traits associated with ASD were assessed by their responses to a questionnaire (i.e., the Iowa Screener) before they made moral judgments across a set of 20 moral dilemmas that independently assess utilitarian and deontological processing. Interestingly, results indicated that increased levels of autistic traits were associated with fewer moral judgments corresponding to either moral theory; that is, higher levels of autistic traits were associated with atypical patterns of moral judgment. In addition, and consistent with some prior methods (e.g., Gaeth et al., 2016), participant scores on the Iowa Screener, as well as their self-identification, were used to categorize participants between two groups (i.e., ASD and Typical) for exploratory purposes. Taken together, this research better informs the relationship between ASD and its associated traits with moral judgment and can inform certain discrepant findings in the field. Implications and ideas for future research are discussed, such as whether traits associated with ASD might relate to alternative moral inclinations, beyond deontology and utilitarianism.

Effects of perspective switching and utilitarian thinking on moral judgments in a sacrificial dilemma among healthcare and non-healthcare students

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals have often faced moral challenges, which required them to choose between endorsing self- or other-sacrifice for the greater good. Drawing on the altruistic rationalization hypothesis and trait-activation theory, this study investigates (a) whether healthcare students' endorsement of utilitarian solutions to sacrificial moral dilemmas varies when they are confronted with the minority group, majority group, or third-person perspective on the given dilemma and (b) whether individual differences in utilitarian thinking, as measured by the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (both instrumental harm and impartial beneficence), predict endorsement of utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas. The study population was divided into a group of healthcare students and a group of non-healthcare students. It was found that the members of both groups expressed a stronger pro-utilitarian position when making moral dilemma judgments from a majority perspective than from the two other perspectives. However, a difference was observed with healthcare students being more reluctant to endorse the utilitarian action than their non-healthcare counterparts in the self-in-majority context. The instrumental harm component was a significant predictor of utilitarian judgments in the healthcare group, but impartial beneficence significantly predicted utilitarian judgments in the non-healthcare group in the self-in-majority context.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04380-z.

Ignorance and moral judgment: Testing the logical priority of the epistemic

It has recently been argued that a person's moral judgments (about both their own and others' actions) are constrained by the nature and extent of their relevant ignorance and, thus, that such judgments are determined in the first instance by the person's epistemic circumstances. It has been argued, in other words, that the epistemic is logically prior to other normative (e.g., ethical, prudential, pecuniary) considerations in human decision-making, that these other normative considerations figure in decision-making only after (logically and temporally) relevant ignorance has constrained the decision-maker's menu of options. If this is right, then a person's moral judgments in some set of circumstances should vary with their knowledge and ignorance of these circumstances. In this study, we test the hypothesis of the logical priority of the epistemic. We describe two experiments in which subjects' knowledge and ignorance of relevant consequences were manipulated. In the second experiment, we also compared the effect of ignorance on moral judgments with that of personal force, a factor previously shown to influence moral judgments. We found broad empirical support for the armchair arguments that epistemic considerations are logically prior to normative considerations.

To kill or not to kill: A systematic literature review of high-stakes moral decision-making measures and their psychometric properties

Introduction

The present systematic review investigates the psychological tools available for capturing high-stakes decisions involving life-death content and their psychometric properties. Valid measurement of these individual differences will provide crucial information in the personnel selection and training in fields where high-stakes moral issues exist (e.g., military, medicine). To our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of such instruments.

Methods

Systematic searches of 6 electronic databases were conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. An appraisal tool evaluated the quality of identified measures. Twenty studies met pre-determined inclusion criteria. Moral decision-making was assessed with either a self-report scale (n = 3) or moral dilemmas (n = 17).

Results

The findings identified two measures, the Defining Issues Test and the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale as psychometrically sound measures of moral decision-making. However, they are unlikely to be considered "gold standard" measures due to their theoretically specific, but limited, scope. Overall, the findings suggest that research in the area has been scattered. There is a lack of consensus on the definition of moral decision-making, and a lack of cross-validation on how different measures of moral decision-making relate to each other. This presents a gap between theory and empirical measurement in moral decision-making. Further work is needed for a unified conceptualization of moral decision-making to pave the way to both theory development and the development of well-validated measurement tools, and this review provides a critical foundation for both.

Influence of Public Sports Services on Residents' Mental Health at Communities Level: New Insights from China

It is generally believed that sports play an important role in healing and boosting mental health. The provision of public sports services is important for enhancing residents' physical fitness and mental health, and for promoting their satisfaction with government public services. To build and strengthen a high-quality sports service-oriented society, it is important to explore whether community public sports services influence residents' mental health. To explore this phenomenon, the study gathered data from China and employed multi-level regression models to meet the study objective. The results show that the residents' age difference is 0.03, and the average daily exercise time is 0.02, which is significantly correlated with residents' mental health. The results show that the lower the availability and greening of sports facilities, and the fewer rest facilities there are, the higher the mental distress of residents may be. Conversely, the improvement of the greening and availability of sports facilities can facilitate the promotion of residents' mental health levels. Moreover, it was found that the mental health of residents is mainly and positively affected by the cleanliness of sports facilities. The street environment affects mental health and is attributed to the damage to sports facilities. Neighborhood communication also improves residents' mental health, and trust between neighbors has the greatest impact on reducing mental distress. Finally, the study proposes that the government should propose strategies to optimize the provision of community public sports services in the study area to boost both social and mental health benefits.

Social value at a distance: Higher identification with all of humanity is associated with reduced social discounting

How much we value the welfare of others has critical implications for the collective good. Yet, it is unclear what leads people to make more or less equal decisions about the welfare of those from whom they are socially distant. The current research sought to explore the psychological mechanisms that might underlie welfare judgements across social distance. Here, a social discounting paradigm was used to measure the tendency for the value of a reward to be discounted as the social distance of its recipient increased. Across two cohorts (one discovery, one replication), we found that a more expansive identity with all of humanity was associated with reduced social discounting. Additionally, we investigated the specificity of this association by examining whether this relationship extended to delay discounting, the tendency for the value of a reward to be discounted as the temporal distance to its receipt increases. Our findings suggest that the observed association with identity was unique to social discounting, thus underscoring a distinction in value-based decision-making processes across distances in time and across social networks. As data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also considered how stress associated with this global threat might influence welfare judgements across social distances. We found that, even after controlling for COVID-19 related stress, correlations between identity and social discounting held. Together, these findings elucidate the psychological processes that are associated with a more equal distribution of generosity.

Are the folk utilitarian about animals?

Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures common moral intuitions. However, recent psychological work challenges this empirical assumption. We review evidence suggesting that the folk is deontological all the way down-it is just that the moral side constraints that protect animals from harm are much weaker than those that protect humans. In fact, it appears that people even attribute some deontological protections, albeit extremely weak ones, to inanimate objects. We call this view Multi-level Weighted Deontology. While such empirical findings cannot show that the Nozickian Hybrid View is false, or that it is unjustified, they do remove its core intuitive support. That support belongs to Multi-level Weighted Deontology, a view that is also in line with the view that Nozick himself seemed to favour. To complicate things, however, we also review evidence that our intuitions about the moral status of humans are, at least in significant part, shaped by factors relating to mere species membership that seem morally irrelevant. We end by considering the potential debunking upshot of such findings about the sources of common moral intuitions about the moral status of animals.

The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited: Does Alcohol Really Increase Utilitarianism in Moral Judgment?

The "drunk utilitarian" phenomenon suggests that people are more likely to accept harm for the greater good when they are under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon conflicts with the ideas that (a) acceptance of pro-sacrificial harm requires inhibitory control of automatic emotional responses to the idea of causing harm and (b) alcohol impairs inhibitory control. This preregistered experiment aimed to provide deeper insights into the effects of alcohol on moral judgments by using a formal modeling approach to disentangle three factors in moral dilemma judgments and by distinguishing between instrumental harm and impartial beneficence as two distinct dimensions of utilitarian psychology. Despite the use of a substantially larger sample and higher doses of alcohol compared with the ones in prior studies, alcohol had no significant effect on moral judgments. The results pose a challenge to the idea that alcohol increases utilitarianism in moral judgments.

Moral foundations, values, and judgments in extraordinary altruists

Donating a kidney to a stranger is a rare act of extraordinary altruism that appears to reflect a moral commitment to helping others. Yet little is known about patterns of moral cognition associated with extraordinary altruism. In this preregistered study, we compared the moral foundations, values, and patterns of utilitarian moral judgments in altruistic kidney donors (n = 61) and demographically matched controls (n = 58). Altruists expressed more concern only about the moral foundation of harm, but no other moral foundations. Consistent with this, altruists endorsed utilitarian concerns related to impartial beneficence, but not instrumental harm. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find group differences between altruists and controls in basic values. Extraordinary altruism generally reflected opposite patterns of moral cognition as those seen in individuals with psychopathy, a personality construct characterized by callousness and insensitivity to harm and suffering. Results link real-world, costly, impartial altruism primarily to moral cognitions related to alleviating harm and suffering in others rather than to basic values, fairness concerns, or strict utilitarian decision-making.

How Imagination and Memory Shape the Moral Mind

Interdisciplinary research has proposed a multifaceted view of human cognition and morality, establishing that inputs from multiple cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions. However, extant work on moral cognition has largely overlooked the contributions of episodic representation. The ability to remember or imagine a specific moment in time plays a broadly influential role in cognition and behavior. Yet, existing research has only begun exploring the influence of episodic representation on moral cognition. Here, we evaluate the theoretical connections between episodic representation and moral cognition, review emerging empirical work revealing how episodic representation affects moral decision-making, and conclude by highlighting gaps in the literature and open questions. We argue that a comprehensive model of moral cognition will require including the episodic memory system, further delineating its direct influence on moral thought, and better understanding its interactions with other mental processes to fundamentally shape our sense of right and wrong.

Alcohol Use Disorder Displays Trait-Related Reductions in Prosocial Decision Making

BACKGROUND

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with deficits in social cognition, but the relationship between harmful alcohol use and the processes underlying interactive social behavior is still unknown. We hypothesized that prosocial decision making is reduced in AUD and that individual differences in the underlying processes are key to better understanding these reductions.

METHODS

In one laboratory study (Swedish participants, n = 240) and one confirmatory online study (American participants, n = 260), we compared young adults with AUD with age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy control subjects on 6 facets of prosocial decision making. We used standardized behavioral economic tasks, namely the dictator game, ultimatum game, trust game, and third-party game. To better understand the expected differences in prosociality, we evaluated attention by tracking eye gaze, decision response time, clinical symptoms, and social cognition.

RESULTS

Altruism (lab study: p = .007; online study: p < .001), fairness (lab study: p = .003; online study: p = .007), and reciprocal trust (lab study: p = .007; online study: p = .039) were reduced in individuals with AUD compared with healthy control subjects, whereas trust and third-party punishment and compensation were comparable in both studies. Reduced prosociality was associated with attending to the selfish response option, faster response time, and moral attitudes, while being dissociated from both psychiatric symptoms and drinking history in AUD.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals with AUD have trait-related reductions in prosocial decision making that do not vary with drinking history or psychiatric symptom load. These reductions were confined to one-to-one interactions accompanied by differences in attention, decision time, and moral attitudes.