The Impact Of Victim's Identifiability On Moral Judgment

When people make moral judgments, they do not treat different kinds of victims equally, identifiable victims get more care than unidentifiable victims, resulting in different moral judgments. In the study, we use different moral situations (including classical trolley/footbridge dilemma, and sensitive moral problems) to examine the impact of victim's identifiability on moral judgments. First of all, we adapt the classical case of the trolley/footbridge dilemma to operate the victim's identifiability, so as to test subjects'moral judgment. Second, we use sensitive moral problems to explore the role of victim's identifiability on moral judgments. Three experimental results show that the victim's identifiability plays different roles in different moral situations:1. In the trolley dilemma, the victim's identifiability makes a significant impact on non-utilitarian moral judgments. The subjects tend to make non-utilitarian moral judgments with the victim more identifiable in the fork.2. In the footbridge dilemma, the victim's identifiability makes a non-significant impact on utilitarian moral judgments. Victim's identifiability does not increase subjects'utilitarian moral judgments.3. In the sensitive moral problems, there is a trend that the victims'identifiability can affect moral judgments, the subjects judged unmoral behaviors that harm the identifiable victims more severe than those harm the unidentifiable victims. In addition, because of the high sensitivity of moral problems, giving the subjects some specific knowledge previously can not regulate the role of the victim's identifiability on moral judgments.