Ethical Cognition

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Ethical Cognition

s.butterfill@warwick.ac.uk & c.sinigaglia

Dual Process Theory of Ethical Abilities (core part)

Two (or more) ethical processes are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.

One process makes fewer demands on scarce cognitive resources than the other.

(Terminology: fast vs slow)

Ok, that’s what the theory says.

Why do we need auxiliary hypotheses?

[see next slide]

Why do we need auxiliary hypotheses?

Because nearly all of the evidence is linked to measurements of a single response and the core idea doesn’t generate readily testable, distinctive predictions without a further hypothesis about what kinds of models underpin the processes.

For example, what should we predict if we increase cognitive load?

Compare physical cognition:

faster* processes :always characteristically Impetus (errors aside)

slower* processes : sometimes characteristically Newtonian

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

evidence for

I am ignoring the neuroscience, which could eventually be important but which I do not find terribly persuasive as things stand.

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 1: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce characteristically consequentialist responses.

less time -> less influence of slow process

less influence of slow process -> less influence of more distal outcomes

less influence of more distal outcomes -> less consequentialist

example dilemmas (that we will use later)

‘low conflict’

‘Chidi is the driver of a trolley, whose brakes have just failed. [...] Chidi can turn the trolley, killing the one; or he can refrain from turning the trolley, killing the five’ (Thomson, 1976, p. 206).

May Chidi turn the trolley?

Suter & Hertwig, 2011 figure 1

caption: ‘Fig. 1. Average proportion of deontological responses separately for conditions and type of moral dilemma (high- versus low-conflict personal and impersonal dilemmas) with data combined across the fast (i.e., time-pressure and self-paced-intuition) and slow conditions (no-time-pressure and self-paced-deliberation) in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Error bars represent standard errors. Only responses to high-conflict dilemmas differed significantly between the conditions’

‘we selected 10 moral dilemmas (five personal and five impersonal ones) that about equally likely gave rise to both yes and no responses, respectively’ (Suter & Hertwig, 2011, p. 465).

‘We distinguished personal dilemmas according to whether harm caused was depicted as a side-effect (low-conflict) or as intended as the means to an end (high-conflict)’ (Suter & Hertwig, 2011, p. 465).

[Ignore the impersonal, but if you want to know ...]

‘a distinction between personal and impersonal moral dilemmas, whereby the crucial difference between the two lies in the emotional response that they trigger or fail to trigger and in the associated judgments. Personal dilemmas—for instance, picture an overcrowded lifeboat in which a crew member throws someone out to keep it afloat—tend to engage emotional processing to a greater extent than dilemmas necessitating less personal agency (e.g., the crew member only needs to hit a switch to remove the passenger).’ (Suter & Hertwig, 2011, p. 455).

‘participants in the time-pressure condition, relative to the no-time-pressure condition, were more likely to give ‘‘no’’ responses in high-conflict dilemmas’

(Suter & Hertwig, 2011, p. 456).

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 1: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce characteristically consequentialist responses.

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

another time pressure study

same prediction as before

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 1: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce consequentialist responses.

time pressure study

Trémolière and Bonnefon, 2014 figure 4

‘The model detected a significant effect of time pressure, p = .03 (see Table 1), suggesting that the slope of utilitarian responses was steeper for participants under time pressure. As is visually clear in Figure 4, participants under time pressure gave less utilitarian responses than control par- ticipants to scenarios featuring low kill–save ratios, but reached the same rates of utilitarian responses for the highest kill–save ratios.’ (Trémolière & Bonnefon, 2014, p. 927)

***todo*** [save for later, more drama: [also mention (Gawronski, Conway, Armstrong, Friesdorf, & Hütter, 2018) p. 1006 ‘reinterpreation’ and p. 992 descriptive vs mechanistsic]] Gawronski & Beer (2017, p. 669) argue for an alternative interpretation: The central findings of Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014) ‘show that outcomes did influence moral judgments, but only when participants were under cognitive load or time pressure (i.e., the white bars do not significantly differ from the gray bars within the low load and no time pressure condi- tions, but they do significantly differ within the high load and time pressure conditions). Thus, a more appro- priate interpretation of these data is that cognitive load and time pressure increased utilitarian responding, which stands in stark contrast to the widespread assumption that utilitarian judgments are the result of effortful cognitive processes (Greene et al., 2008; Suter & Hertwig, 2011).

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 1: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce consequentialist responses.

Prediction 2*: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce sensitivity to outcomes.

‘the dual-process theory [...] makes the empirical claim that ordinary people’s utilitarian judgments are typically the products of deliberate, aggregate cost-benefit reasoning (Greene et al., 2001, 2004, 2013). Consistent with this claim, people’s judgments are sensitive to aggregate consequences: People who endorse killing one to save five typically do not endorse killing five to save one, or killing one to save zero’ (Conway, Goldstein-Greenwood, Polacek, & Greene, 2018, p. 243).

time pressure study

Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014, p. figure 4)

You can see this more clearly by looking at a different graph of the same data ...

Prediction 2*: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce sensitivity to outcomes.

Looking at it this way: higher time pressure (and higher cognitive load) makes people discriminate *more* (not less) between saving 5 and saving 500.

So here people see to be more sensitive to differences in distal outcome in conditions where we expect the fast process to dominate.

And that is exactly the oppositive of what the dual process theory would predict.

Gawronski & Beer (2017, p. figure 1); data from Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)

Prediction 2*: Limiting the time available to make a decision will reduce sensitivity to outcomes.

Critique is consistent with Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)’s own report; but not Greene (2014)’s use of the evidence.

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

Seems equivocal at best.

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 3: higher cognitive load will reduce the dominance of the more outcome-sensitive process.

Conway & Gawronsky 2013, figure 1

Note that if we just provide ‘incongruent’ dilemmas, we cannot distinguish all the different possibilities.

This is why varying the outcomes (which we do between congruent and incongruent dilemmas) is so important.

‘incongruent dilemma’ : kill one to save five lives (consequentialism says yes, deontology says no)

‘congruent dilemma’ : kill one to prevent a paint bomb from going off (consequentialism and deontology both say no)

Conway & Gawronsky 2013, figure 3

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Prediction 3: higher cognitive load will reduce the dominance of the more outcome-sensitive process.

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

appendix

evaluating the evidence

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

evidence against the auxiliary hypothesis

‘Submarine (4/60)

You are responsible for the mission of a submarine [...] leading [...] from a control center on the beach. An onboard explosion has [...] collapsed the only access corridor between the upper and lower levels of the ship. [...] water is quickly approaching to the upper level of the ship. If nothing is done, 12 [extreme:60] people in the upper level will be killed.

[...] the only way to save these people is to hit a switch in which case the path of the water to the upper level will be blocked and it will enter the lower level of the submarine instead.

However, you realize that your brother and 3 other people are trapped in the lower level. If you hit the switch, your brother along with the 3 other people in the lower level (who otherwise would survive) will die [...]

Would you hit the switch?’

(Bago & Neys, 2019, p. ][supplementary materials)

Bago & de Neys, 2019 supplementary materials

first response under time pressure and cognitive load

second response under neither

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

prediction: first response will be less influenced by outcomes than the second

Because they did not vary the outcomes, this is tricky. (Save for later.)

First response vs second response.

Bago & de Neys, 2019 table 2

Study 1: lots of consequentialist responses (= U)

Can also compute ‘noncorrection’ rate for those responses whihc ended D (ie. DD/(UD+DD)). In this study it’s 69.3% I.e. proportion of switchers *to* D was higher than proportion of switchers to U!

Study 2: few consequentialist responses (= U) But still reversals are few.

Can also compute ‘noncorrection’ rate for those responses whihc ended D (ie. DD/(UD+DD)). Overall for all studies it’s 84.2% I.e. proportion of switchers *to* D was only 0.4% lower than to U!

‘Our critical finding is that although there were some instances in which deliberate correction occurred, these were the exception rather than the rule. Across the studies, results consistently showed that in the vast majority of cases in which people opt for a [consequentialist] response after deliberation, the [consequentialist] response is already given in the initial phase’

(Bago & Neys, 2019, p. 1794).

Bago & de Neys, 2019 p. 1794

Objection: consistency effects? No!

‘a potential consistency confound in the two-response paradigm. That is, when people are asked to give two consecutive responses, they might be influenced by a desire to look consistent [...] However, in our one-response pretest we observed 85.4% [...] of [consequentialist] responses on the conflict versions. This is virtually identical to the final [consequentialist] response rate of 84.5% [...] in our main two-response study (see main results).’

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Suter & Hertwig, 2011 : yes

Bago & de Neys, 2019 : no

Suter & Hertwig, 2011 figure 1

caption: ‘Fig. 1. Average proportion of deontological responses separately for conditions and type of moral dilemma (high- versus low-conflict personal and impersonal dilemmas) with data combined across the fast (i.e., time- pressure and self-paced-intuition) and slow conditions (no-time-pressure and self-paced-deliberation) in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Error bars represent standard errors. Only responses to high-conflict dilemmas differed significantly between the conditions’

‘participants in the time-pressure condition, relative to the no-time-pressure condition, were more likely to give ‘‘no’’ responses in high-conflict dilemmas’

(Suter & Hertwig, 2011, p. 456).

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the outcomes of an action

Suter & Hertwig, 2011 : yes

Bago & de Neys, 2019 : no

Neither study observed the effects of manipulating outcomes

Cf Gawronski & Beer (2017, p. 365): ‘a given judgment cannot be categorized as utilitarian without confirming its property of being sensitive to consequences, which requires a comparison of judgments across dilemmas with different consequences. Similarly, a given judgment cannot be categorized as deontological without confirming its property of being sensitive to moral norms, which requires a comparison of judgments across dilemmas with different moral norms’

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Wait. Isn’t this too quick!

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

Saw this last time.

Conway & Gawronsky 2013, figure 1

Note that if we just provide ‘incongruent’ dilemmas, we cannot distinguish all the different possibilities.

This is why varying the outcomes (which we do between congruent and incongruent dilemmas) is so important.

‘incongruent dilemma’ : kill one to save five lives (consequentialism says yes, deontology says no)

‘congruent dilemma’ : kill one to prevent a paint bomb from going off (consequentialism and deontology both say no)

Maybe people just prefer not to act when under time pressure?

Conway & Gawronsky 2013, figure 1

Gawronski et al, 2017 figure 1

Gawronski et al, 2017 figure 4

‘The only significant effect in these studies was a significant increase in participants’ general preference for inaction as a result of cognitive load. Cognitive load did not affect participants’ sensitivity to morally relevant consequences’

(Gawronski, Armstrong, Conway, Friesdorf, & Hütter, 2017, p. 363).

‘cognitive load influences moral dilemma judgments by enhancing the omission bias, not by reducing sensitivity to consequences in a utilitarian sense’

(Gawronski et al., 2017, p. 363).

‘Instead of reducing participants’ sensitivity to consequences in a utilitarian sense, cognitive load increased participants’ general preference for inaction. ’

(Gawronski et al., 2017, p. 365).

Gawronski et al, 2017 p. 363

Evidence Greene (2014) cites includes:

Suter & Hertwig (2011)
Trémolière & Bonnefon (2014)
Conway & Gawronski (2013)

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Suter & Hertwig, 2011 : yes

Bago & de Neys, 2019 : no

Can we resolve the apparent contradiction by preference for inaction under time-pressure?

I don’t see how. Both studies used nonconsequentialist = deontological. So any preference for inaction under time-pressure should have had the same effect in both studies!

These studies’ results appear to confict (time-pressure does/doesn't make people less consequentialist)

These studies’ results appear to confict (time-pressure has barely any effect / does make people less consequentialist [because prefer inaction])

aux. hypothesis: only the slow process ever flexibly and rapidly takes into account differences in the more distal outcomes of an action

Too early to give up on the dual-process theory altogether. We have no better account. But we should not be confident in the auxiliary hypothesis.

reflective equilibrium

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Ethical Cognition

Ethical Cognition

s.butterfill@warwick.ac.uk & c.sinigaglia

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