Across eight experiments (N = 2310), we studied whether people would prioritize rescuing individuals who may be thought to contribute more to society. We found that participants were generally dismissive of general rules that prioritize more socially beneficial individuals, such as doctors instead of unemployed people. By contrast, participants were more supportive of one-off decisions to save the life of a more socially beneficial individual, even when such cases were the same as those covered by the rule. This generality effect occurred robustly even when controlling for various factors. It occurred when the decision-maker was the same in both cases, when the pairs of people differing in the extent of their indirect social utility was varied, when the scenarios were varied, when the participant samples came from different countries, and when the general rule only covered cases that are exactly the same as the situation described in the one-off condition. The effect occurred even when the general rule was introduced via a concrete precedent case. Participants' tendency to be more supportive of the one-off proposal than the general rule was significantly reduced when they evaluated the two proposals jointly as opposed to separately. Finally, the effect also occurred in sacrificial moral dilemmas, a general phenomenon occurring in multiple moral contexts. We discuss possible explanations of the effect, including concerns about negative consequences of the rule and a deontological aversion against making difficult trade-off decisions unless they are absolutely necessary.

在八个实验（N  = 2310）中，我们研究了人们是否会优先考虑拯救可能被认为对社会有更多贡献的个人。我们发现，参与者通常不赞成一般规则，这些规则优先考虑对社会有益的个人，例如医生而不是失业人员。相比之下，即使这种情况与规则所涵盖的情况相同，参与者也更支持一次性决定以挽救社会上更有利的人的性命。这种普遍性效应即使在控制各种因素的情况下，也能很好地发生故障。当两种情况下的决策者相同，间接社会程度不同的成对人发生变化，情景发生变化，参与者样本来自不同国家以及规则仅涵盖与一次性条件中描述的情况完全相同的情况。即使通过具体的先例案例引入了通用规则，效果仍然发生。当他们联合评估两个提案而不是分别评估时，参与者倾向于一次性提案而不是一般规则的趋势大大降低了。最后，这种效果也发生在牺牲道德困境中，这是一种在多种道德语境中发生的普遍现象。