While prior studies have already associated ‘utilitarian’ judgment with antisocial traits ( Bartels and Pizarro, 2011, Glenn et al., 2010, Koenigs et al., 2012 and Wiech et al., 2013), here we show that such judgments are also tied to explicit amoral and self-centered judgments. Moreover, while these further associations were largely driven by antisocial tendencies, some (such as the more lenient attitude toward clear moral transgressions) were present
even when we controlled for these antisocial traits. We wish to emphasize, however, that our main result—the lack of association between ‘utilitarian’ judgment in sacrificial dilemmas and markers of concern for the greater good in other contexts—remained even when we controlled for the antisocial component of ‘utilitarian’ judgment. Bortezomib supplier Thus, even if some individuals arrive at more ‘utilitarian’ conclusions in sacrificial dilemmas, Crenolanib solubility dmso not because of indifference to harming others but by deliberative effort ( Conway and Gawronski, 2013, Gleichgerrcht and Young, 2013 and Wiech et al., 2013) such a supposedly ‘utilitarian’ tendency is still not associated with paradigmatic utilitarian judgments in other moral contexts. Several limitations of the present study
need to be highlighted. First, one of our key results is a lack of correlation between ‘utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial dilemmas and markers of impartial concern for the greater good, and it might be objected that this null result could be due to lack of statistical power. However, consistently with prior studies (Kahane et al., 2012), the present study failed to find such an association across
four experiments employing a wide range of measures, with large sample sizes, while repeatedly finding associations between ‘utilitarian’ judgment and antisocial and self-centered traits, judgments and attitudes. Thus, while we cannot rule out the possibility that such an association could emerge in future studies using an even larger number of subjects or different measures, we submit that, in light of the present results, a robust association between ‘utilitarian’ Selleck RG7420 judgment and genuine concern for the greater good seems extremely unlikely. A second potential limitation is that the present study does not directly investigate the proximal causal antecedents of ‘utilitarian’ judgment in sacrificial dilemmas, and the results reported here are correlational. It might thus be objected that while our results suggest that individuals with ‘utilitarian’ tendencies in sacrificial dilemmas do not exhibit similar tendencies in other moral contexts, these findings cannot rule out that ‘utilitarian’ judgments within the context of sacrificial dilemmas are nevertheless driven by the utilitarian aim of impartially maximizing the greater good.