The needs of the many: Exploring associations of personality with third-party judgments of public health-related utilitarian rule violations.

ABSTRACT: Safeguarding the rights of minorities is crucial for just societies. However, there are conceivable situations where minority rights might seriously impede the rights of the majority. Favoring the minority in such cases constitutes a violation of utilitarian principles. To explore the emotional, cognitive, and punitive responses of observers of such utilitarian rule transgressions, we conducted an online study with 1004 participants. Two moral scenarios (vaccine policy and epidemic) were rephrased in the third-party perspective. In both public health-related scenarios, the protagonist opted against the utilitarian option, which resulted in more fatalities in total, but avoided harm to a minority. Importantly, in vaccine policy, members of the minority cannot be identified beforehand and th

SUBMITTER: Behnke A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10121057 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature