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The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas
Centuries’ worth of cultural stories suggest that self-sacrifice may be a cornerstone of our moral concepts, yet this notion is largely absent from recent theories in moral psychology. For instance, in the footbridge version of the well-known trolley car problem the only way to save five people from...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468073/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26075881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127409 |
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author | Sachdeva, Sonya Iliev, Rumen Ekhtiari, Hamed Dehghani, Morteza |
author_facet | Sachdeva, Sonya Iliev, Rumen Ekhtiari, Hamed Dehghani, Morteza |
author_sort | Sachdeva, Sonya |
collection | PubMed |
description | Centuries’ worth of cultural stories suggest that self-sacrifice may be a cornerstone of our moral concepts, yet this notion is largely absent from recent theories in moral psychology. For instance, in the footbridge version of the well-known trolley car problem the only way to save five people from a runaway trolley is to push a single man on the tracks. It is explicitly specified that the bystander cannot sacrifice himself because his weight is insufficient to stop the trolley. But imagine if this were not the case. Would people rather sacrifice themselves than push another? In Study 1, we find that people approve of self-sacrifice more than directly harming another person to achieve the same outcome. In Studies 2 and 3, we demonstrate that the effect is not broadly about sensitivity to self-cost, instead there is something unique about sacrificing the self. Important theoretical implications about agent-relativity and the role of causality in moral judgments are discussed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4468073 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-44680732015-06-25 The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas Sachdeva, Sonya Iliev, Rumen Ekhtiari, Hamed Dehghani, Morteza PLoS One Research Article Centuries’ worth of cultural stories suggest that self-sacrifice may be a cornerstone of our moral concepts, yet this notion is largely absent from recent theories in moral psychology. For instance, in the footbridge version of the well-known trolley car problem the only way to save five people from a runaway trolley is to push a single man on the tracks. It is explicitly specified that the bystander cannot sacrifice himself because his weight is insufficient to stop the trolley. But imagine if this were not the case. Would people rather sacrifice themselves than push another? In Study 1, we find that people approve of self-sacrifice more than directly harming another person to achieve the same outcome. In Studies 2 and 3, we demonstrate that the effect is not broadly about sensitivity to self-cost, instead there is something unique about sacrificing the self. Important theoretical implications about agent-relativity and the role of causality in moral judgments are discussed. Public Library of Science 2015-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4468073/ /pubmed/26075881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127409 Text en © 2015 Sachdeva et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Sachdeva, Sonya Iliev, Rumen Ekhtiari, Hamed Dehghani, Morteza The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title | The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title_full | The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title_fullStr | The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title_short | The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas |
title_sort | role of self-sacrifice in moral dilemmas |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468073/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26075881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127409 |
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