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

Autor(en)
Carolina Pletti, Lorella Lotto, Giulia Buodo, Michela Sarlo
Abstrakt

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(en)
Externe Organisation(en)
Università degli Studi di Padova
Journal
British Journal of Psychology
Band
108
Seiten
351-368
Anzahl der Seiten
18
ISSN
0007-1269
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12205
Publikationsdatum
05-2017
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
501006 Experimentalpsychologie
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Psychology(all)
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/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