Gender
difference in moral judgments rooted in emotion, not reasoning, study finds
Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Science Daily
If a time machine was available, would it be right to kill Adolf
Hitler when he was still a young Austrian artist to prevent World War II and
save millions of lives? Should a police officer torture an alleged bomber to
find hidden explosives that could kill many people at a local cafe?
When faced
with such dilemmas, men are typically more willing to accept harmful actions
for the sake of the greater good than women. For example, women would be less
likely to support the killing of a young Hitler or torturing a bombing suspect,
even if doing so would ultimately save more lives.
"Women are more likely to have a gut-level negative
reaction to causing harm to an individual, while men experience less emotional
responses to doing harm," says lead research author Rebecca Friesdorf. The
finding runs contrary to the common stereotype that women being more emotional
means that they are also less rational, Friesdorf says. The journal article was
published online in the Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin on
April 3, 2015.
In a large-scale reanalysis of data from 6,100 participants,
Friesdorf, a graduate student in social psychology at Wilfrid Laurier
University in Canada, teamed with Paul Conway, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in
psychology at the University of Cologne, and Bertram Gawronski, Ph.D., a
psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, to examine gender
differences in judgments about moral dilemmas. Participants were asked 20
questions that posed various moral dilemmas, including decisions about murder,
torture, lying, abortion, and animal research.
The study examined two contrasting philosophical principles that
relate to ethics. In deontology, the morality of an action depends on its
consistency with a moral norm. Immanuel Kant, the 18th century philosopher who
was the most famous proponent of the theory, once argued that it was always
wrong to lie, even if a murderer asked whether his intended victim was inside a
house so he could kill him.
Conversely, utilitarianism holds that an action is
moral if it maximizes utility, or the greatest good for the most people. From a
utilitarian view, an action could be ethical in one situation and unethical in
another depending on the potential outcome.
Using an advanced statistical procedure to quantify the strength
of deontological and utilitarian inclinations, the research team found that
women were more likely than men to adhere to deontological principles.
However,
the researchers found no evidence for gender differences in utilitarian
reasoning. The findings suggest that women have a stronger emotional aversion
to causing harm than men. However, men and women engage in similar levels of
rational thinking about the outcomes of harmful action. The findings are in
line with previous research showing that women are more empathetic to the
feelings of other people than men, whereas gender differences in cognitive
abilities tend to be small or nonexistent, Friesdorf says.
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Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Note: Materials may be edited for
content and length.
Journal
Reference:
Rebecca Friesdorf et al. Gender
Differences in Responses to Moral Dilemmas: A Process Dissociation Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, April 2015 DOI: 10.1177/0146167215575731
Cite
This Page:
Society for Personality and Social Psychology. "Gender
difference in moral judgments rooted in emotion, not reasoning, study
finds." Science Daily,
3 April 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150403095927.htm>.