It's immoral, but I'd do it! Psychopathy traits affect decision-making in sacrificial dilemmas and in everyday moral situations

Author(s)
Carolina Pletti, Lorella Lotto, Giulia Buodo, Michela Sarlo
Abstract

This research investigated whether emotional hyporeactivity affects moral judgements and choices of action in sacrificial moral dilemmas and in everyday moral conflict situations in which harm to other’s welfare is differentially involved. Twenty-six participants with high trait psychopathy (HP) and 25 with low trait psychopathy (LP) were selected based on the primary psychopathy scale of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale. HP participants were more likely to sacrifice one person to save others in sacrificial dilemmas and to pursue a personal advantage in everyday moral situations entailing harm to another’s good. While deciding in these situations, HP participants experienced lower unpleasantness as compared to LP participants. Conversely, no group differences emerged in choice of action and unpleasantness ratings for everyday moral situations that did not entail harm to others. Importantly, moral judgements did not differ in the two groups. These results suggest that high psychopathy trait affects choices of action in sacrificial dilemmas because of reduced emotional reactivity to harmful acts. The dissociation between choice of action and moral judgement suggests that the former is more closely related to emotional experience. Also, emotion seems to play a critical role in discriminating harmful from harmless acts and in driving decisions accordingly.

Organisation(s)
External organisation(s)
University of Padova
Journal
British Journal of Psychology
Volume
108
Pages
351-368
No. of pages
18
ISSN
0007-1269
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12205
Publication date
05-2017
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501006 Experimental psychology
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Psychology(all)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/its-immoral-but-id-do-it-psychopathy-traits-affect-decisionmaking-in-sacrificial-dilemmas-and-in-everyday-moral-situations(6f037411-8671-42f8-af09-b9041f816c84).html