Drawbacks of using trolley-like scenarios in moral judgements

Use of moral experiments for imagine a scenario method in psychological studies on moral decision-making

Joshua Green’s 2009 Cognition paper pushing moral buttons

They used 4 conditions (the usual two scenarios, and they included two other conditions with physical/personal force)...the least acceptable is the case where personal force is used.

Spatial proximity and physical contact has no difference. Major difference comes in with personal force.

This 31 participants supend disbelief, and 10 participants reporting confusion.

Perception and engagement

These findings can be refuted due to suspend disbelief?

Controlling for suspending disbelief.

Self-sacrifice

But it doesn’t solve the case that you suggest that even self-sacrificing may not save those 5 people.

Introducing a TOC.

In real life we don’t know the outcomes of these decisions to moral dilemmas.

About 40 participants had to be excluded in Green’s experiment bcoz of suspending disbelief.