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An Experimental Investigation of Emotions and Reasoning in the Trolley Problem

Alessandro Lanteri1, 2 Contact Information, Chiara CheliniContact Information and Salvatore RizzelloContact Information

(1)  Department of Economic Science and Quantitative Methods (SEMeQ), Faculty of Economics, University of Eastern Piedmont at Novara, via Perrone 18, Novara, 28100, Italy
(2)  Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE), Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, P. O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
(3)  Department of Economics, Turin University, via Po 53, Torino, 10124, Italy
(4)  Department of Legal and Economic Science, Faculty of Law, University of Eastern Piedmont at Alessandria, via Mondovi 6-10, Alessandria, 15100, Italy

Received: 20 July 2007  Accepted: 7 January 2008  Published online: 1 February 2008

Abstract  Elaborating on the notions that humans possess different modalities of decision-making and that these are often influenced by moral considerations, we conducted an experimental investigation of the Trolley Problem. We presented the participants with two standard scenarios (‹lever’ and ‹stranger’) either in the usual or in reversed order. We observe that responses to the lever scenario, which result from (moral) reasoning, are affected by our manipulation; whereas responses to the stranger scenario, triggered by moral emotions, are unaffected. Furthermore, when asked to express general moral opinions on the themes of the Trolley Problem, about half of the participants reveal some inconsistency with the responses they had previously given.

Keywords  experiments - intuition - moral emotions - moral judgement - moral reasoning - trolley problem


Contact Information Alessandro Lanteri (Corresponding author)
Email: alessandro@lanteri.org

Contact Information Chiara Chelini
Email: chiara.chelini@unito.it

Contact Information Salvatore Rizzello
Email: salvatore.rizzello@unipmn.it
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