“AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF MORAL
INTUITIONS: TOWARDS AN EVOLUTIONARY
ETHICS”
Coco Gutilla, Sylvia Joo, Joseph
Svec, Natalie Zepeda
Petrinovich, L., Jorgensen, M., & O’Neill, P. (1993). An Empirical Study of
Moral Intuitions: Towards an Evolutionary Ethics. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 64(3), 467-478.
REASONS FOR CONDUCTING THE STUDY
There has recently been renewed interest in the
study of morality by the field of psychology.
 Piaget and Kohlberg started/stimulated the
discussion of moral development.

 There
has been considerable criticism of the adequacy of
Piaget and Kohlbergs findings/assumptions.

This research is an attempt to further that
understanding.
METHODS
Two different hypothetical situations were
presented to subjects, they then chose how to
handle the situation based upon predetermined
choices.
 Participants were undergraduate students from
the University of California in an introductory
psychology class.
 The situations were presented in a questionnaire
form which had three parts

 The
first two parts were the hypothetical situations, and the
third was some questions regarding general issues of ethics
and morality.
TROLLEY SITUATION

In the trolley situation, you are an innocent bystander on an out
of control trolley. There are no breaks , only a switch that will
change the course of the trolley. You can either choose to
change its path or have it stay its course. If you stay the course
you kill 5 people on the track, if you change the course you kill
one person on the spare track. The options were formatted in
one of two ways.



First way, “Killing Format”. This means that the wording of the questionnaire was put
in terms of killing, i.e. “if you change course you will KILL one innocent person”
The second format was put in terms of a “Saving Format”. This means that the
questions were posed in the form of saving life. i.e. “If you chose to change the
course of the trolley you will have 5 innocent people.”
Note that the options are exactly the same, its simply a format difference.
LIFEBOAT SITUATION

In the Lifeboat situation a ship has sunk, and there are six
survivors on a lifeboat. However, the lifeboat can only support
five people. Five of the survivors are humans and the sixth is a
collie dog. Participants were given three courses of action from
which to choose, and asked to rate each option on a 6 point
likert scale.



(a) Throw the dog over.
(b) Draw straws among the humans and throw loser over.
(c) Draw straws among all survivors…..even the dog…..and throw the loser over.
RESULTS

Petrinovich et. al. looked at multiple different aspects
and variables when conducting this research,
however, for this presentation I will only focus on a few
of the more salient ones.

Speciesism was the first important factor. They found that in nearly all of the
questionnaires they got back people chose to save humans over other species. There
were several other variations of the studies in which the people were switched out for
animals for certain choices, or they were described as being extremely elderly. In the case
of the lifeboat the collie was switched out for an endangered species. Even with these
changes people still overwhelmingly chose to save their own kind.
RESULTS CONT…

Researchers also looked at some of the
demographic data they got along with some of
the general questions about ethics/morality.
 This
information showed that gender played a role
in how people chose. Women tended to be more
egalitarian in their approach, almost using a lottery
system. Men on the other hand tended to make
more concrete decisions.
RESULTS CONT…

The last two effects that were noticed were
inclusive fitness, and Nazism.

Nazism. As I mentioned earlier in some of the questionnaires there
were some substitutions as to what people were represented in these
dangerous situations. One of these changes was that Nazis were
introduced. In these cases people unanimously chose to save other
species of animals before the Nazis. Which is expected.

Inclusive Fitness. In some of the situations, people were instructed that
some of the members in the situation were family or friends. Not very
surprisingly, people chose to save those who were closer to their kin
group.