Osaka City University has the characteristic of not showing utilitarian judgments to Japanese students in the "trolley problem," which asks whether the decision to sacrifice one life to save many lives is morally correct. It was clarified by the research of Associate Professor Hirofumi Hashimoto of the Graduate School of Literature.
According to Osaka City University, a research group led by Associate Professor Hashimoto targeted 19 Japanese female university students, saying, "A runaway train with the brakes is running, and five people tied to the railroad track died. However, if you pull the lever and pull the runaway train into the branch line, you will be sacrificed by one person tied to the track. "
The decision to pull the lever to reduce the number of victims is called utilitarian, and the decision not to pull the lever is called deontological because it is not permissible to sacrifice one's life regardless of whether the result is good or bad.Recent psychological studies have attributed deontological judgments to an automatic intuition system and utilitarian judgments to a logical pondering system.
Intuitively, more than 40% of Japanese female students showed a utilitarian judgment to reduce the number of victims by pulling the lever, but after careful consideration, it decreased to the 30% level, and after discussions in the group, 30 It fell to around%.
It was found that this result is less likely to show utilitarian judgment than the results of previous studies in Europe and the United States, and that the tendency becomes even stronger after repeated discussions.The research group suspects that it is the result of the willingness to escape the responsibility associated with judgment.
Paper information:[Frontiers in Psychology] Fickle Judgments in Moral Dilemmas: Time Pressure and Utilitarian Judgments in an Interdependent Culture
