PSYC 309 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Trolley Problem, Ethical Dilemma, Office Space
Document Summary
Things that we do that might impact others: personally, cultural values what"s appropriate or not, socio-cultural influences on our sense of right/wrong. The long-standing rationalist tradition in moral psychology emphasizes the role of reason in moral judgment. A more recent trend places increased emphasis on emotion. The present study was inspired by a family of ethical dilemmas familiar to contemporary moral philosophers. One such dilemma is the trolley dilemma: a runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate set of tracks where it will kill one person instead of five. Now consider a similar problem, the footbridge dilemma. As before, a trolley threatens to kill five people. You are standing next to a large stranger on a footbridge that spans the tracks, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people.
