París: vector de la pasión

In this experiment we employed our measures of evaluative focus in order to explore the relationship of agent and victim focus to moral judgments of hypothetical dilemmas that involve a tradeoff among lives, such as the trolley problem (Foot, 1967; Thomson, 1985). Our dilemmas described a person (the ―agent‖) who brought about direct harm to one person (the ―proximal victim‖) in order to save a greater number of other people (the ―distal victims‖). We contrasted two types of scenarios that have been extensively investigated in past research (Cushman et al., 2006; Greene et al., 2001 2009; Mikhail, 2000; Petrinovich et al., 1993): personal cases, in which the agent brought about the harm as a means to saving the five and by applying forceful contact (e.g., pushing someone off the footbridge in order to stop the train, thereby saving the

five), and impersonal cases, in which the harm brought about by the agent involved neither forceful contact nor was a means to saving the five (e.g., turning a train onto a sidetrack, where the victim is standing and dies as a side-effect of saving the five). As I discussed earlier, people typically judge that killing the proximal victim is morally wrong in the personal cases, but morally permissible in the impersonal cases.

Experiment 2 asks whether, in the personal cases, moral condemnation is associated to agent or victim focus. On the victim focus view, the critical difference between personal and impersonal cases is in empathic concern towards the proximal victim, and this difference is supported by a simulation of the victim‘s perspective. Several considerations support this view. First, the proximal victim seems relatively more ‗prominent‘ in the personal cases: when we contemplate the footbridge case, we imagine the victim being forcefully harmed ―up-close‖, and this may elicit greater empathic concern. Second, when we perceive intention in the perpetrator‘s attack, the attack seems more painful than if it had been inflicted accidentally (Gray & Wegner, 2008). This effect would result in the perception of greater pain, and likely more empathic concern for the victim in the personal cases, where the agent is described as harming the victim in order to save the five, than in the impersonal cases, where the victim is harmed only as a side effect of saving the five. Third, populations known to have deficits in empathic concern, as indexed by blunted physiological (Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith, 1997; Damasio, Tranel & Damasio, 1990) and neural (Deeley et al., 2006) reactions to the perception of sad and fearful faces, demonstrate abnormally high rates of endorsement of personal harm (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011; Koenigs et al., 2007, 2012). Thus, prior work suggests that outcome focus, facilitated by victim perspective- taking, may contribute to the enhanced condemnation of personal harm.

On the agent focus view, an evaluation focused on the agent‘s action gives rise to the difference in moral judgment between these types of dilemmas. Specifically,

moral condemnation depends on greater aversion towards performing the agent‘s action in the personal version than the impersonal version, and this process is supported by a simulation of the agent‘s perspective. A recent experiment examining the features that drive the condemnation of personal harm supports this view (Greene et al., 2009). Specifically, condemnation of the welfare trade-off is triggered not by spatial proximity or physical contact between the agent and the victim, but by the application of the agent‘s muscular force to the victim. Moreover, this effect is heightened when the agent acted intentionally, such that participants condemned the welfare trade-off most when the agent applied muscular force to bring about harm as a means to saving the five. These findings point towards ―a system of moral judgment that operates over an integrated representation of goals and personal force—representations such as ‗goal- within-the-reach-of-muscle-force.‘‖ (Greene et al., 2009, p. 370), suggesting that moral judgment is influenced by an evaluation of the agent’s motor behavior and goal, rather than the victim‘s perceived suffering. Furthermore, evidence that people show an aversion to performing simulated harmful actions even when they give rise to no actual harm (Cushman et al., 2012) indicates a potential basis for the action-focused affective processes engaged in the moral judgment of dilemmas involving harm.

In sum, when we contemplate the trolley problem and judge that it is wrong to push the man but ok to flip the switch, are we feeling greater compassion for the man on the bridge than we feel for the victim on the sidetrack, or are we feeling greater aversion to the thought of pushing a person than we feel towards pulling a switch? In this experiment, we take a first step in answering this question by examining whether individual differences in agent or victim focus are selectively associated with differences in the condemnation of personal harm.

4.4.1. Methods

Participants voluntarily logged on to the Moral Sense Test website. In a 2 (Personal vs. Impersonal moral dilemmas) x 2 (EF Before vs. After) between-subjects design, participants viewed six moral dilemmas (see Appendix B) and completed the indices of evaluative focus. Moral dilemmas described an agent who brought about harm to a proximal victim and saved a greater number of people. Participants then rated the moral wrongness of the agent‘s behavior on a 7-point Likert scale from 1: ―Not morally wrong at all‖ to 7: ―Very morally wrong‖. Dilemmas were presented in a pseudorandom order and the order of presentation of the dilemmas block and the measures of evaluative focus was counterbalanced. Finally, participants optionally provided basic demographic information.

4.4.2. Results

425 participants (223 female) completed the experiment. Data were discarded from 38 participants who (i) completed the experiment in under 4 minutes (deemed the minimum completion time), and (ii) whose responses to our measures (action focus, outcome focus, ratings of agent and victim perspective-taking) and mean moral judgment deviated by over three standard deviations from the group mean.

In a two-way 2 (condition: Personal, Impersonal) × 2 (order: EF before, EF after) ANOVA on moral judgment, there was a main effect of condition, F(1,391) = 125.1, p < .0001, and no effect of order of presentation or interaction with condition, ps > .3. The main effect of condition indicated that participants rated the welfare trade-off as morally worse in the personal condition (n = 204, M = 4.10, SD = 1.18) than in the impersonal condition (n = 187, M = 2.80, SD = 1.05), t(389) = -11.45, p < .0001.

Turning then to the main analysis of interest, we found that action focus correlated with deontological moral judgment in the personal condition, r(204) = .25, p < .0004, whereas outcome focus did not, r(204) = .08, p = .3. On impersonal dilemmas,

the correlation between action focus and moral judgment approached significance,

r(187) = .12, p = . 10, and there was no relationship between moral judgment and

outcome focus, r(187) = .06, p = .4 (see Fig. 3). A multiple regression model predicting moral judgment by dilemma type, action focus, and the dilemma type x action focus interaction revealed main effects of action focus, β = .17, p < .001 and dilemma type, β = .48, p < .001, but the interaction term did not reach significance, β = .07, p = .12. In addition, the correlation between action focus and moral judgment was stronger when participants completed the scale prior to the moral dilemmas: EF first r(92) = .34, p < .001; EF after r(112) = .17, p < .07.

Figure 13. Moral judgment by action (x, solid trend line) and outcome foci (o, dotted

trend line): Personal moral dilemmas (left), impersonal moral dilemmas (right).

Our presumption that action focus in third-party moral judgment should be accomplished by agent perspective-taking was supported by evidence of a correlation between these two measures. Consequently, we predicted that agent perspective-taking should be associated with deontological moral judgment on personal harm dilemmas. However, we found no correlation between moral judgment and either endorsement or ratings of agent and victim perspective-taking, all ps > .7.

Taken together, these results provide partial support for the action model in the harm domain. Action focus in moral self-regulation correlated with the tendency to

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 M or al jud gmen t Focus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 M or al jud gmen t Focus

condemn harmful action in personal dilemma contexts, but not impersonal dilemma contexts. A related prediction concerning self-reported perspective-taking in third-party moral judgment was not supported.

We replicated relationships between religiosity and political orientation and responses to the assessment of evaluative focus found in Experiment 1. Political orientation correlated negatively with outcome focus, r(369) = -.22, p < .0001, and positively with action focus selectively in the EF first condition, r(177) = .22, p < .004. Similarly, political orientation correlated negatively with ratings of victim perspective- taking, r(369) = -.17, p < .001, and positively with ratings of agent perspective-taking,

r(369) = .18, p < .0005. Religiosity correlated with action focus, r(390) = .29, p < .0001,

and agent perspective-taking, r(390) = .25, p < .0001, but did not correlate with outcome focus or victim perspective-taking, ps > .8. Lastly, on our measure of endorsement of agent vs. victim perspective-taking in third-party moral judgment we found the same relationship: participants who endorsed victim perspective-taking were significantly more liberal (n = 199, M = 3.01, SD = 1.46) than were participants who endorsed agent perspective-taking (n = 170, M = 3.75, SD = 1.69), t(367) = 4.56, p < .0001. The corresponding difference in religiosity trended in the same direction, but non-significantly, t(388) = 1.53, p < .13. In sum, we found consistent patterns of relationship on both measures of self-regulation and third-party judgment; namely, conservatives and religious participants tended to be agent-focused while liberals tended to be victim-focused.