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Gender differences in moral judgment and the evaluation of gender-specified moral agents

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Abstract

Whether, and if so, how exactly gender differences are manifested in moral judgment has recently been at the center of much research on moral decision making. Previous research suggests that women are more deontological than men in personal, but not impersonal, moral dilemmas. However, typical personal and impersonal moral dilemmas differ along two dimensions: Personal dilemmas are more emotionally salient than impersonal ones and involve a violation of Kant’s practical imperative that humans must never be used as a mere means, but only as ends. Thus, it remains unclear whether the reported gender difference is due to emotional salience or to the violation of the practical imperative. To answer this question, we explore gender differences in three moral dilemmas: a typical personal dilemma, a typical impersonal dilemma, and an intermediate dilemma, which is not as emotionally salient as typical personal moral dilemmas, but contains an equally strong violation of Kant’s practical imperative. While we replicate the result that women tend to embrace deontological ethics more than men in personal, but not impersonal, dilemmas, we find no gender differences in the intermediate situation. This suggests that gender differences in these type of dilemmas are driven by emotional salience, and not by the violation of the practical imperative. Additionally, we also explore whether people think that women should behave differently than men in these dilemmas. Across all three dilemmas, we find no statistically significant differences about how people think men and women should behave.

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. One further remark is in order here: Kantian deontological ethics would not allow to treat different genders differently. Kantians might thus not be very happy about the fact that we investigate such behavior in Kantian terms. Moral agents can, however, not be expected to be fully consistent—and our results will indeed prove that they will uphold Kantian principles in certain situations but not in others. The lurking contradiction is thus only an apparent one that arises from making an empirical, descriptive study using terminology from a normative theory: we do not claim that our participants are either (Kantian) deontologists or not, but that they may or may not pick the characteristically deontological course of action, i.e., upholding the practical imperative, in such and such a situation.

  2. The reliability of Amazon Mechanical Turk has been thoroughly investigated (e.g., Paolacci et al. 2010; Horton et al. 2011; Mason and Suri 2012; Brañas-Garza et al. 2016; d’Adda et al. 2017).

  3. A logit regression without control on gender, age and education in the Trolley Problem led to p value 0.2775, \(\chi ^{2}\) (1) = 6.39913, \({\mathrm{coeff}}=0.353995\), \(z=1.086\). With control, we obtained p value 0.2688, \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 6.99903\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=0.364350\), \(z=1.106\). A logit regression without control on gender, age and education in the Trapdoor Dilemma led to p value 0.6446, \(\chi ^{2} (1) = 0.331016\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.141944\), \(z=-0.4612\). With control, we obtained p value 0.6668, \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 14.6967\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.138823\), \(z=-0.4305\). Finally, a logit regression without control on gender, age and education in the Footbridge Dilemma led to p value 0.4718, \(\chi ^{2} (1) = 1.75243\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.225039\), \(z=-0.7195\). With control, we obtained p value 0.6433, \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 10.4933\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.151055\), \(z=-0.4631\).

  4. In fact, the work of Greene et al. (2001, 2004) that they rely on treats the Trolley Problem and the Trapdoor Dilemma as being characteristic of impersonal and personal moral dilemmas, respectively.

  5. A logit regression without control on age, education and whether subjects where assigned to either the Amanda or Adam task led to \(p=0.6775\), \(\chi ^{2} (1) = 5.38597\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.136336\) and \(z=-0.4159\). With control, we obtained \(p=0.6953\), \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 6.99903\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.132789\) and \(z=-0.3916\).

  6. A logit regression without control on age, education and whether subjects where assigned to either the Amanda or Adam task led to \(p=0.8435\), \(\chi ^{2} (1) = 0.157122\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=0.0607937\) and \(z=0.1974\). With control, we obtained \(p=0.7222\), \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 14.6967\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=-0.117436\) and \(z=-0.3555\).

  7. A logit regression without control on age, education and whether subjects where assigned to either the Amanda or Adam task led to \(p=0.0161\), \(\chi ^{2} (1) = 7.17284\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=0.772383\) and \(z=2.407\). With control, we obtained \(p=0.0443\), \(\chi ^{2} (4) = 10.4933\), \({\mathrm{coeff}}=0.659502\) and \(z=2.011\).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Middlesex University London, London, UK

    Valerio Capraro

  2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jonathan Sippel

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  1. Valerio Capraro
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  2. Jonathan Sippel
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Correspondence to Valerio Capraro.

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Handling editor: Stefano Federici (University of Perugia); Reviewers: Massimiliano Marianelli (University of Perugia), Luca Alici (University of Perugia).

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Capraro, V., Sippel, J. Gender differences in moral judgment and the evaluation of gender-specified moral agents. Cogn Process 18, 399–405 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-017-0822-9

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