When facing sacrificial dilemmas in which harm maximizes outcomes, people appear sensitive to three moral principles: They are more averse to actively causing harm than passively allowing it (action principle), causing harm directly than indirectly (contact principle), and causing harm as a means than as a by-product of helping others (intention principle). Across five studies and a meta-analysis (N = 1,218), we examined whether individual differences in people’s sensitivity to these principles were related to participants’ moral preferences on sacrificial dilemmas. Interestingly, sensitivity to each of these principles was related to both elevated harm-rejection (i.e., deontological) as well as elevated outcome-maximization (i.e., utilitarian) response tendencies. Rather than increasing responses consistent with only one philosophical position, people sensitive to moral principles balanced moral concerns about causing harm and maximizing outcomes similar to people high in other measures of moral concern.

当面临伤害最大化结果的牺牲困境时，人们似乎对三个道德原则很敏感：他们更不愿意主动造成伤害而不是被动允许伤害（行动原则），直接造成伤害而不是间接伤害（接触原则），以及将伤害作为一种手段而不是作为帮助他人的副产品（意图原则）。跨越五项研究和一项荟萃分析（N= 1,218），我们检查了人们对这些原则的敏感性的个体差异是否与参与者对牺牲困境的道德偏好有关。有趣的是，对这些原则中的每一个的敏感性都与更高的伤害拒绝（即义务论）以及更高的结果最大化（即功利主义）反应倾向有关。对道德原则敏感的人并没有增加仅与一种哲学立场一致的反应，而是平衡了对造成伤害和最大化结果的道德关注，类似于其他道德关注指标高的人。