scholarly journals Small-scale utilitarianism: High acceptance of utilitarian solutions to Trolley Problems among a horticultural population in Nicaragua

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0249345
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Winking ◽  
Jeremy Koster
Keyword(s):  
Direct Action ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Omission Bias ◽  
Trolley Problems

Researchers often use moral dilemmas to investigate the specific factors that influence participants’ judgments of the appropriateness of different actions. A common construction of such a dilemma is the Trolley Problem, which pits an obvious utilitarian solution against a common deontological dictum to not do harm to others. Cross-cultural studies have validated the robustness of numerous contextual biases, such as judging utilitarian decisions more negatively if they require contact with other individuals (contact bias), they force others to serve as a means to an end (means bias), and if they require direct action rather than inaction (omission bias). However, such cross-cultural research is largely limited to studies of industrialized, nation-state populations. Previous research has suggested that the more intimate community relationships that characterize small-scale populations might lead to important differences, such as an absence of an omission bias. Here we contribute to this literature by investigating perceptions of Trolley Problem solutions among a Mayangna/Miskito community, a small-scale indigenous population in Nicaragua. Compared to previously sampled populations, the Mayangna/Miskito participants report higher levels of acceptance of utilitarian solutions and do not exhibit an omission bias. We also examine the justifications participants offered to explore how Mayangna/Miskito culture might influence moral judgments.

scholarly journals Small-Scale Utilitarianism: High Acceptance of Utilitarian Solutions to Trolley Problems among a Horticultural Population

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Winking ◽  
Jeremy Koster
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Population ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Omission Bias ◽  
Trolley Problems ◽  
Preferred Solutions

The study of moral dilemmas enables researchers to investigate the specific factors that influence humans’ judgments of the appropriateness of different actions. A common construction of this dilemma is the so-called Trolley Problem, which pits an obvious utilitarian solution, one which saves the largest number of lives, against a common deontological dictum to not do harm to others. Participants vacillate on their preferred preferences based on a number of well-documented contextual factors. Although the literature is replete with cross-cultural studies validating the robustness of such biases, the sampled cultural variation within this literature is largely limited to Western, industrialized, educated, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations. Here we expand this variation by investigating preferred solutions to common Trolley Problem scenarios among a Mayangna community, a small-scale indigenous population residing in northern Nicaragua. Compared to previously sampled populations, the Mayangna participants report much higher levels of acceptance of utilitarian solutions. Furthermore, while some tests suggest a contact/means bias, there is no evidence of an omission bias. We examine spontaneously reported justifications to explore how Mayangna culture might lead participants to take into account considerations that are largely absent in WEIRD populations.

scholarly journals Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.

scholarly journals Harming Kin to Save Strangers: Further Evidence for Abnormally Utilitarian Moral Judgments after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2186-2196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley C. Thomas ◽  
Katie E. Croft ◽  
Daniel Tranel
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Harm To Others

The ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) has been implicated as a critical neural substrate mediating the influence of emotion on moral reasoning. It has been shown that the vmPFC is especially important for making moral judgments about “high-conflict” moral dilemmas involving direct personal actions, that is, scenarios that pit compelling utilitarian considerations of aggregate welfare against the highly emotionally aversive act of directly causing harm to others [Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007]. The current study was designed to elucidate further the role of the vmPFC in high-conflict moral judgments, including those that involve indirect personal actions, such as indirectly causing harm to one's kin to save a group of strangers. We found that patients with vmPFC lesions were more likely than brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants to endorse utilitarian outcomes on high-conflict dilemmas regardless of whether the dilemmas (1) entailed direct versus indirect personal harms and (2) were presented from the Self versus Other perspective. In addition, all groups were more likely to endorse utilitarian outcomes in the Other perspective as compared with the Self perspective. These results provide important extensions of previous work, and the findings align with the proposal that the vmPFC is critical for reasoning about moral dilemmas in which anticipating the social-emotional consequences of an action (e.g., guilt or remorse) is crucial for normal moral judgments [Greene, J. D. Why are VMPFC patients more utilitarian?: A dual-process theory of moral judgment explains. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 322–323, 2007; Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007].

Revisiting the methodological debate on interruptions

Pragmatics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Noëlle Guillot
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Medium Size ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
French And English ◽  
Project Data ◽  
Methodological Debate

This paper considers issues relating to the identification and categorisation of interruptive acts for cross- cultural study, as revealed by the conflicting methodological requirements of a medium-scale project involving contrastive analysis of confrontational native speaker and non-native speaker talk in French and English. The paper opens with a brief introduction to the project, followed by a review of issues from the conflicting ends of corpus annotation and Conversation Analysis, the main locus of information about, and research into, sequential aspects of talk and interruptive phenomena. It then uses two examples from the project data for native English and French respectively to reveal and discuss tensions between diverging requirements in the categorisation of interruptive acts. It shows that, while categorising interruptive phenomena inevitably entails a degree of arbitrariness - minimised in either very large corpora or small scale situated analysis -, medium-size data are peculiarly vulnerable to issues of empirical validity, but that their function and the options they create to derive critical findings from the tensions between approaches make them an important tool for research, notably cross-cultural research.

Sociocultural memory development research drives new directions in gadgetry science

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Van Bergen ◽  
John Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Memory Development ◽  
Development Research ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Cross Cultural Research

Abstract Sociocultural developmental psychology can drive new directions in gadgetry science. We use autobiographical memory, a compound capacity incorporating episodic memory, as a case study. Autobiographical memory emerges late in development, supported by interactions with parents. Intervention research highlights the causal influence of these interactions, whereas cross-cultural research demonstrates culturally determined diversity. Different patterns of inheritance are discussed.

Measurement Invariance of a Universal Behavioral Screener Across Samples From the USA and Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gino Casale ◽  
Robert J. Volpe ◽  
Brian Daniels ◽  
Thomas Hennemann ◽  
Amy M. Briesch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Measurement Invariance ◽  
Student Behavior ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
School Based ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Universal Screener ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa

Abstract. The current study examines the item and scalar equivalence of an abbreviated school-based universal screener that was cross-culturally translated and adapted from English into German. The instrument was designed to assess student behavior problems that impact classroom learning. Participants were 1,346 K-6 grade students from the US (n = 390, Mage = 9.23, 38.5% female) and Germany (n = 956, Mage = 8.04, 40.1% female). Measurement invariance was tested by multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across students from the US and Germany. Results support full scalar invariance between students from the US and Germany (df = 266, χ2 = 790.141, Δχ2 = 6.9, p < .001, CFI = 0.976, ΔCFI = 0.000, RMSEA = 0.052, ΔRMSEA = −0.003) indicating that the factor structure, the factor loadings, and the item thresholds are comparable across samples. This finding implies that a full cross-cultural comparison including latent factor means and structural coefficients between the US and the German version of the abbreviated screener is possible. Therefore, the tool can be used in German schools as well as for cross-cultural research purposes between the US and Germany.

Alcohol-Related Cross-Cultural Research Rediscovered

1988 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 543-543
Author(s):  
Kaye Middleton Fillmore
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document