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Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants
When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. He...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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National Academy of Sciences
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007553/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31964849 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911517117 |
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author | Awad, Edmond Dsouza, Sohan Shariff, Azim Rahwan, Iyad Bonnefon, Jean-François |
author_facet | Awad, Edmond Dsouza, Sohan Shariff, Azim Rahwan, Iyad Bonnefon, Jean-François |
author_sort | Awad, Edmond |
collection | PubMed |
description | When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. Here we analyze responses to three sacrificial dilemmas by 70,000 participants in 10 languages and 42 countries. In every country, the three dilemmas displayed the same qualitative ordering of sacrifice acceptability, suggesting that this ordering is best explained by basic cognitive processes rather than cultural norms. The quantitative acceptability of each sacrifice, however, showed substantial country-level variations. We show that low relational mobility (where people are more cautious about not alienating their current social partners) is strongly associated with the rejection of sacrifices for the greater good (especially for Eastern countries), which may be explained by the signaling value of this rejection. We make our dataset fully available as a public resource for researchers studying universals and variations in human morality. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7007553 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-70075532020-02-18 Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants Awad, Edmond Dsouza, Sohan Shariff, Azim Rahwan, Iyad Bonnefon, Jean-François Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. Here we analyze responses to three sacrificial dilemmas by 70,000 participants in 10 languages and 42 countries. In every country, the three dilemmas displayed the same qualitative ordering of sacrifice acceptability, suggesting that this ordering is best explained by basic cognitive processes rather than cultural norms. The quantitative acceptability of each sacrifice, however, showed substantial country-level variations. We show that low relational mobility (where people are more cautious about not alienating their current social partners) is strongly associated with the rejection of sacrifices for the greater good (especially for Eastern countries), which may be explained by the signaling value of this rejection. We make our dataset fully available as a public resource for researchers studying universals and variations in human morality. National Academy of Sciences 2020-02-04 2020-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7007553/ /pubmed/31964849 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911517117 Text en Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Social Sciences Awad, Edmond Dsouza, Sohan Shariff, Azim Rahwan, Iyad Bonnefon, Jean-François Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title | Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title_full | Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title_fullStr | Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title_full_unstemmed | Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title_short | Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
title_sort | universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants |
topic | Social Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007553/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31964849 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911517117 |
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