The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 121; no. 1; pp. 154 - 161
• Main Authors: Bartels, Daniel M., Pizarro, David A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.10.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Alienation; Antisocial Personality Disorder - psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Decision Making; Emotions; Ethical Theory; Ethics; Female; Humans; Individual Characteristics; Intuition; Judgement; Judgment; Machiavellianism; Male; Medical sciences; Moral Development; Moral dilemmas; Moral Issues; Moral Judgment; Moral rules; Moral Values; Morality; Morals; No Meaning; Personality; Personality Assessment; Personality disorders; Personality Traits; Problem Solving; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychopathy; Reasoning; Sociopathic Personality; Utilitarianism; Value Judgment; Values; Decision making; Utilitarianism; Values; Intuition; No Meaning; Psychopathy; Emotions; Ethics; Moral dilemmas; Morality; Moral rules; Machiavellianism; Reasoning; Judgment; Affect affectivity; Antisocial personality; Cognition; Personality disorder; Behavioral disorder; Psychopathia; Moral attitude; Emotion emotionality; Experimental study; Moral science; Value; Rule; Predictive factor; Social behavior disorder
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.05.010

► Participants high in psychopathy gave more utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. ► Participants with traits indicative of negative moral character were more utilitarian. ► Researchers should not equate utilitarian responses to dilemmas with optimal morality. Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness. These results question the widely-used methods by which lay moral judgments are evaluated, as these approaches lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral.