Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

An Experimental Investigation of Emotions and Reasoning in the Trolley Problem

Journal of Business Ethics volume 83, pages 789–804 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Elaborating on the notions that humans possess different modalities of decision-making and that these are often influenced by moral considerations, we conducted an experimental investigation of the Trolley Problem. We presented the participants with two standard scenarios (‹lever’ and ‹stranger’) either in the usual or in reversed order. We observe that responses to the lever scenario, which result from (moral) reasoning, are affected by our manipulation; whereas responses to the stranger scenario, triggered by moral emotions, are unaffected. Furthermore, when asked to express general moral opinions on the themes of the Trolley Problem, about half of the participants reveal some inconsistency with the responses they had previously given.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

References

  • Alspach S., G. Bishop: 1991. Question Order Effect of Presidential Approval Ratings on Gubernatorial Approval Ratings: A Research Note, Social Forces, 69(4), 1241–1248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anscombe G. E. M.: 1958, Modern Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, 33(124), 1–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aquinas, T.: c. 1270, Summa Theologica, 2nd Rev. Edition, Fathers of the English Dominican Province␣(trans.) (online at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa)

  • Bargh J., T. Chartrand: 1999, The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron J.: 1994, “Nonconsequentialist decisions” (with commentary and reply), Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 17, 1–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron J.: 1995, A Psychological View of Moral Intuition, Harvard Review of Philosophy, 5, 36–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron J.: 1997, The Illusion of Morality as Self-Interest: A Reason to Cooperate in Social Dilemmas, Psychological Science, 8, 330–335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron J.: 1998, Judgement Misguided: Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making (Oxford University Press, Oxford)

    Google Scholar 

  • Benton E., J. Daly: 1991, A Question Order Effect in a Local Government Survey, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(4), 640–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer C., G. Loewenstein, D. Prelec: 2005, Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, 43(1), 9–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chelini, C., A. Lanteri, and S. Rizzello: 2007, `Moral Dilemmas and Decision-Making: An Experimental Investigation of the Trolley Problem', Mimeo

  • Cohen J.: 2005, The Vulcanization of Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotions, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 3–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crespi I., D. Morris: 1984, Question Order Effect and the Measurement of Candidate Preference in the 1982 Connecticut Elections, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 48(3), 578–591

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damasio A.: 1999, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt Brace, Orlando, FL)

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio A.: 2000, Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 2nd Edition (Quill, New York, NY)

    Google Scholar 

  • Elster, J.: 1999, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

    Google Scholar 

  • Foot, P.: 1978, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” in: Virtues and Vices (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)

  • Gilovich T., D. W. Griffin, D. Kahneman: 2002, The Psychology of Intuitive Judgement: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene J., J. Haidt: 2002, How (and Where) Does Moral Judgement Work?, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 517–523

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, J., R. Sommerville, L. Nyatrom, J. Darley and J. Cohen: 2001, `An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgement', Science 293, 2105–2108

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene J., L. Nystrom, A. Engell, J. Darley, J. Cohen: 2004, The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgement, Neuron, 44: 389–400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J.: 2001, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Psychological Review, 108, 814–834

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J.: 2007, The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology, Science, 316, 998–1002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. and C. Joseph: 2004, ‹Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues’, Daedalus, Special Issue on Human Nature, 55–66

  • Hauser M.: 2006, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Harper Collins, New York, NY)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, S.: 1989, The Limits of Morality (Oxford University Press, Oxford)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman D.: 2003, Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioural Economics, American Economic Review, 93(5), 1449–1475

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman D., A. Tversky: 1979, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decisions Under Risk, Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kant, I.: 1784, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, M.␣Gregor (ed. & trans.) (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

  • Lichtenstein S., P. Slovic (eds.): 2006, The Construction of Preferences (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

    Google Scholar 

  • McFarland, S.: 1981, Effects of Question Order on Survey Responses. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 45(2), 208–215

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Messick D., T. Schell: 1992, Evidence for an Equality Heuristic in Social Decision Making, Acta Psychologica, 80, 311–323

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T.: 1993, “Chapter 3” from Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press), reprinted in D. Statman (ed.), Moral Luck (State University of New York Press, New York, NY)

  • Norcross A.: 2002, Killing and Letting Die in R. G. Frey, C. H. Wellman (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics (Blackwell, Oxford, UK)

    Google Scholar 

  • Royzman E., J. Baron: 2002, The Preference for Indirect Harm, Social Justice Research, 15, 165–184

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rubinstein, A.: 2007, Instinctive and Cognitive Reasoning: A Study of Response Times, Economic Journal, 117, 1243–1259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schelling, T.: 1984, Choice and Consequence: Perspectives of an Errant Economist (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, H. A.: 1955, A Behavioural Model of Rational Choice, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simon, H. A.: 1961, Administrative Behavior, 2nd Edition (Mac Millan, New York, NY)

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, H. A.: 1978, On How to Decide What to Do, Bell Journal of Economics, 9(2), 494–507

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Singer, P.: 1999, “On the Appeal to Intuitions in Ethics” in D. Jamieson (ed.), Singer and His Critics (Blackwell)

  • Steinbock B., A. Norcross (eds.): 1994, Killing and Letting Die, 2nd Edition (Fordham University Press, New York, NY)

    Google Scholar 

  • Sunstein, C.: 2004, Moral Heuristics, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8(4), 531–542

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J.: 1976, Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem, The Monist, 59, 204–217

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J.: 1985, The Trolley Problem, Yale Law Journal, 94(6), 1395–1415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J.: 1986, Rights, Restitution, and Risk: Essays in Moral Theory (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tversky A., D. Kahneman: 1981, The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice, Science, 4481, 453–458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Unger, P.: 1996, Living High and Letting Die (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK)

    Google Scholar 

  • Willits F., B. Ke: 1995, Part-Whole Question Order Effects: Views of Rurality, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 59(3), 392–403

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D.: 2002, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, T.: 2002, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic Science and Quantitative Methods (SEMeQ), Faculty of Economics, University of Eastern Piedmont at Novara, via Perrone 18, Novara, 28100, Italy

    Alessandro Lanteri

  2. Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE), Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, P. O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Alessandro Lanteri

  3. Department of Economics, Turin University, via Po 53, Torino, 10124, Italy

    Chiara Chelini

  4. Department of Legal and Economic Science, Faculty of Law, University of Eastern Piedmont at Alessandria, via Mondovi 6-10, Alessandria, 15100, Italy

    Salvatore Rizzello

Authors
  1. Alessandro Lanteri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Chiara Chelini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Salvatore Rizzello
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandro Lanteri.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lanteri, A., Chelini, C. & Rizzello, S. An Experimental Investigation of Emotions and Reasoning in the Trolley Problem. J Bus Ethics 83, 789–804 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9665-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9665-8

Keywords

search

Navigation