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Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles
Upon the introduction of autonomous vehicles into daily traffic, it becomes increasingly likely that autonomous vehicles become involved in accident scenarios in which decisions have to be made about how to distribute harm among involved parties. In four experiments, participants made moral decision...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34941936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261673 |
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author | Mayer, Maike M. Bell, Raoul Buchner, Axel |
author_facet | Mayer, Maike M. Bell, Raoul Buchner, Axel |
author_sort | Mayer, Maike M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Upon the introduction of autonomous vehicles into daily traffic, it becomes increasingly likely that autonomous vehicles become involved in accident scenarios in which decisions have to be made about how to distribute harm among involved parties. In four experiments, participants made moral decisions from the perspective of a passenger, a pedestrian, or an observer. The results show that the preferred action of an autonomous vehicle strongly depends on perspective. Participants’ judgments reflect self-protective tendencies even when utilitarian motives clearly favor one of the available options. However, with an increasing number of lives at stake, utilitarian preferences increased. In a fifth experiment, we tested whether these results were tainted by social desirability but this was not the case. Overall, the results confirm that strong differences exist among passengers, pedestrians, and observers about the preferred course of action in critical incidents. It is therefore important that the actions of autonomous vehicles are not only oriented towards the needs of their passengers, but also take the interests of other road users into account. Even though utilitarian motives cannot fully reconcile the conflicting interests of passengers and pedestrians, there seem to be some moral preferences that a majority of the participants agree upon regardless of their perspective, including the utilitarian preference to save several other lives over one’s own. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8700044 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87000442021-12-24 Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles Mayer, Maike M. Bell, Raoul Buchner, Axel PLoS One Research Article Upon the introduction of autonomous vehicles into daily traffic, it becomes increasingly likely that autonomous vehicles become involved in accident scenarios in which decisions have to be made about how to distribute harm among involved parties. In four experiments, participants made moral decisions from the perspective of a passenger, a pedestrian, or an observer. The results show that the preferred action of an autonomous vehicle strongly depends on perspective. Participants’ judgments reflect self-protective tendencies even when utilitarian motives clearly favor one of the available options. However, with an increasing number of lives at stake, utilitarian preferences increased. In a fifth experiment, we tested whether these results were tainted by social desirability but this was not the case. Overall, the results confirm that strong differences exist among passengers, pedestrians, and observers about the preferred course of action in critical incidents. It is therefore important that the actions of autonomous vehicles are not only oriented towards the needs of their passengers, but also take the interests of other road users into account. Even though utilitarian motives cannot fully reconcile the conflicting interests of passengers and pedestrians, there seem to be some moral preferences that a majority of the participants agree upon regardless of their perspective, including the utilitarian preference to save several other lives over one’s own. Public Library of Science 2021-12-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8700044/ /pubmed/34941936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261673 Text en © 2021 Mayer et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Mayer, Maike M. Bell, Raoul Buchner, Axel Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title | Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title_full | Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title_fullStr | Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title_full_unstemmed | Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title_short | Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
title_sort | self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34941936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261673 |
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