Moral Judgments and Decisions in Trolley Problems

Natalie Gold (King's College London) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (11 July, 2012) titled "Moral Judgments and Decisions in Trolley Problems". Abstract: Hypothetical dilemmas, such as trolley problems, are used by philosophers and psychologists in order to probe intuitions about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others. The dilemmas usually involve life and death decisions. I report the results of an experiment using hypothetical dilemmas in which the domain and severity of harm are varied and an experiment using a real life trolley problem, involving economic harms.