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In this article, we argue that when making moral decisions, unconscious thought can lead to more utilitarian moral decisions (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences), compared to conscious thought and immediate decision making. Therefore, we presented participants with a complex version of the well-known footbridge dilemma. In immediate decision conditions, participants made decisions what to do in this dilemma immediately. In conscious thought conditions, participants consciously thought about what to do for 3 minutes and then made their decisions. In unconscious thought conditions, participants were distracted for 3 minutes, and next made their decisions. As expected, participants who thought unconsciously about the dilemma were more willing to make utilitarian decisions than participants who thought consciously or who made an immediate decision. The current findings provide a new perspective on the social psychology of moral decision making and further insight into unconscious thinking.
Since classical times, there have been arguments in moral philosophy and philosophical ethics that either rationalist or intuitionist conceptions of moral judgment are true (Beauchamp, 2001). Rationalistic and intuitionist models have different views on how people make moral decisions. Rationalistic approaches emphasize that people make moral judgments by using controlled cognition to make deliberate and conscious moral judgments (e.g., Kant, 1785; Kohlberg, 1973; Turiel, 1983). In contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgments emphasize the role of intuitive, quick, and automatic processes (e.g., Haidt, 2001; Hume, 1739). More recently, Greene and colleagues proposed that people make moral judgment through a combination of both types of processes, and that people need controlled cognitive processes to overcome their initial quick and automatic responses when making moral judgments (Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001). In the current article, we build and extend on these models and present evidence for a new perspective on the way people make moral judgments. That is, we argue that giving your moral judgments after a few minutes of distraction and thereby not consciously but unconsciously processing the moral dilemma at hand can lead to overcoming your initial, quick, and automatic responses.
HOW PEOPLE MAKE MORAL JUDGMENTS
In modern moral psychology (e.g., Haidt, 2007), the two different perspectives on the way...