Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2020 Jun 16;117(24):13203-13204.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2005012117.

Revised analysis shows relational mobility predicts sacrificial behavior in Footbridge but not Switch or Loop trolley problems

Affiliations
Comment

Revised analysis shows relational mobility predicts sacrificial behavior in Footbridge but not Switch or Loop trolley problems

Scott Claessens et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Association between relational mobility and decisions in the three trolley problem variants from (A) the separate country-level regressions by Awad et al. (2) (n = 23 countries) and (B) our Bayesian multilevel logistic regression using the complete dataset (n = 182,780 decisions). This model accounts for geographic and linguistic distance between countries and incorporates measurement error on both the country-level probability of taking action (95% credible interval represented as vertical lines around points) and the country-level relational mobility variable (± 1 SE represented as horizontal lines around points). Lines reflect posterior median regression lines, and shaded areas reflect 95% credible intervals. We found no relationship between relational mobility and sacrificial behavior in the Switch and Loop dilemmas, although the positive relationship was robust in the Footbridge dilemma.

Comment in

Comment on

References

    1. Foot P., The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect in virtues and vices. Oxford Rev. 5, 5–15 (1967).
    1. Awad E., Dsouza S., Shariff A., Rahwan I., Bonnefon J.-F., Universals and variations in moral decisions made in 42 countries by 70,000 participants. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 2332–2337 (2020). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Thomson R., et al. , Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 7521–7526 (2018). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Naroll R., Two solutions to Galton’s problem. Philos. Sci. 28, 15–39 (1961).
    1. Bromham L., Hua X., Cardillo M., Schneemann H., Greenhill S. J., Parasites and politics: Why cross-cultural studies must control for relatedness, proximity and covariation. R. Soc. Open Sci. 5, 181100 (2018). - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources