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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sachdeva, Sonya, Iliev, Rumen, Ekhtiari, Hamed, Dehghani, Morteza
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
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.
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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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