Risking your life without a second thought: intuitive decision-making and extreme altruism.

ABSTRACT: When faced with the chance to help someone in mortal danger, what is our first response? Do we leap into action, only later considering the risks to ourselves? Or must instinctive self-preservation be overcome by will-power in order to act? We investigate this question by examining the testimony of Carnegie Hero Medal Recipients (CHMRs), extreme altruists who risked their lives to save others. We collected published interviews with CHMRs where they described their decisions to help. We then had participants rate the intuitiveness versus deliberativeness of the decision-making process described in each CHMR statement. The statements were judged to be overwhelmingly dominated by intuition; to be significantly more intuitive than a set of control statements describing deliberative decision-ma

SUBMITTER: Rand DG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4198114 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature