By Mane Kara-Yakoubian writing for PsyPost
A series of six studies published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology concluded that those who opt to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, are perceived as less predictable and less moral than those who opt for inaction, resulting in 5 people harmed. .
I was personally curious about this topic because of how interested humans are in being ‘moral backseat drivers.’ We are intensely concerned with policing the behaviour of others. There is a growing perspective in moral psychology originated by Oliver Scott Curry of Oxford, known as ‘morality as cooperation’ that posits that a moral sense evolved in humans in order to facilitate cooperation,
Said study author Martin Turpin (@MartinHarry_T), a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo.