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Comparative Study
. 2020 Feb 4;117(5):2332-2337.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1911517117. Epub 2020 Jan 21.

Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants

Edmond Awad  1   2 , Sohan Dsouza  2 , Azim Shariff  3 , Iyad Rahwan  4   5   6 , Jean-François Bonnefon  4   7
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants

Edmond Awad et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

When do people find it acceptable to sacrifice one life to save many? Cross-cultural studies suggested a complex pattern of universals and variations in the way people approach this question, but data were often based on small samples from a small number of countries outside of the Western world. Here we analyze responses to three sacrificial dilemmas by 70,000 participants in 10 languages and 42 countries. In every country, the three dilemmas displayed the same qualitative ordering of sacrifice acceptability, suggesting that this ordering is best explained by basic cognitive processes rather than cultural norms. The quantitative acceptability of each sacrifice, however, showed substantial country-level variations. We show that low relational mobility (where people are more cautious about not alienating their current social partners) is strongly associated with the rejection of sacrifices for the greater good (especially for Eastern countries), which may be explained by the signaling value of this rejection. We make our dataset fully available as a public resource for researchers studying universals and variations in human morality.

Keywords: culture; dilemma; morality.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Geographical coverage and stimuli. (A) Many participants came from Europe and the Americas, but more than 40 countries delivered sample sizes of 200+ participants. Participants made decisions in three scenario variants: (B) Switch, (C) Loop, and (D) Footbridge.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Percentage choosing to sacrifice in each scenario variant. In all of these countries, participants were most likely to sacrifice in Switch, then in Loop, then in Footbridge. Within each continent, countries are ordered by decreasing order of the average acceptability of sacrifice in the three scenarios. Oc., Oceania. AU: Australia, NZ: New Zealand, US: United States of America, MX: Mexico, CA: Canada, BR: Brazil, AR: Argentina, CO: Colombia, CZ: Czechia, GB: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, HU: Hungary, PT: Portugal, IE: Ireland, FR: France, SE: Sweden, BE: Belgium, ES: Spain, IT: Italy, SK: Slovakia, RO: Romania, NL: Netherlands, NO: Norway, FI: Finland, DE: Germany, PL: Poland, CH: Switzerland, UA: Ukraine, DK: Denmark, RU: Russian Federation, GR: Greece, AT: Austria, BY: Belarus, VN: Viet Nam, IL: Israel, TR: Turkey, IN: India, SG: Singapore, HK: Hong Kong, KR: The Republic of Korea, JP: Japan, TW: Taiwan (Province of China), CN: China.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Funnel plots for the difference in decisions between scenario variants. (A) The difference between the proportion of participants choosing to sacrifice in Switch and the proportion choosing to sacrifice in Loop was small, with an effect size converging to about 0.10 as a function of increasing sample size. (B) The difference between the proportion of participants choosing to sacrifice in Loop and the proportion choosing to sacrifice in Footbridge was twice as large, but also heterogeneous, with greater variance in countries with greater sample size.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Association between relational mobility and decisions in the three scenario variants. (A) Scatter plots and (B) tables with regression model coefficients and P values show that greater relational mobility is correlated with a greater propensity to endorse sacrifice in all variants, even after controlling for other relevant country-level variables. This correlation is especially strong among the subsample of Asian countries, as shown by the regression lines which were fitted to this subsample for illustration.
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