Human moral reasoning types in autonomous vehicle moral dilemma: A cross-cultural comparison of Korea and Canada

Social class and moral judgment: a process dissociation perspective

Do social classes differ in moral judgment? Previous research showed that upper-class actors have a greater inclination toward utilitarian judgments than lower-class actors and that this relationship is mediated by empathic concern. In this paper, we take a closer look at class-based differences in moral judgment and use the psychometric technique of process dissociation to measure utilitarian and deontological decision inclinations as independent and orthogonal concepts. We find that upper-class actors do indeed have a greater inclination toward decisions consistent with utilitarian principles, albeit only to a quite small extent. Class-related differences are more pronounced with respect to deontological judgments, in so far as upper-class actors are less inclined to judgments consistent with deontological principles than lower-class actors. In addition, it is shown that class-based differences in utilitarian judgments are mediated by cognitive styles and not so much by empathic concern or moral identity. None of these potential mediators explains class-based differences in the inclination toward deontological judgments.

Analyzing Factors Influencing Situation Awareness in Autonomous Vehicles-A Survey

Autonomous driving of higher automation levels asks for optimal execution of critical maneuvers in all environments. A crucial prerequisite for such optimal decision-making instances is accurate situation awareness of automated and connected vehicles. For this, vehicles rely on the sensory data captured from onboard sensors and information collected through V2X communication. The classical onboard sensors exhibit different capabilities and hence a heterogeneous set of sensors is required to create better situation awareness. Fusion of the sensory data from such a set of heterogeneous sensors poses critical challenges when it comes to creating an accurate environment context for effective decision-making in AVs. Hence this exclusive survey analyses the influence of mandatory factors like data pre-processing preferably data fusion along with situation awareness toward effective decision-making in the AVs. A wide range of recent and related articles are analyzed from various perceptive, to pick the major hiccups, which can be further addressed to focus on the goals of higher automation levels. A section of the solution sketch is provided that directs the readers to the potential research directions for achieving accurate contextual awareness. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is uniquely positioned for its scope, taxonomy, and future directions.

Effects of perspective switching and utilitarian thinking on moral judgments in a sacrificial dilemma among healthcare and non-healthcare students

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals have often faced moral challenges, which required them to choose between endorsing self- or other-sacrifice for the greater good. Drawing on the altruistic rationalization hypothesis and trait-activation theory, this study investigates (a) whether healthcare students' endorsement of utilitarian solutions to sacrificial moral dilemmas varies when they are confronted with the minority group, majority group, or third-person perspective on the given dilemma and (b) whether individual differences in utilitarian thinking, as measured by the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (both instrumental harm and impartial beneficence), predict endorsement of utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas. The study population was divided into a group of healthcare students and a group of non-healthcare students. It was found that the members of both groups expressed a stronger pro-utilitarian position when making moral dilemma judgments from a majority perspective than from the two other perspectives. However, a difference was observed with healthcare students being more reluctant to endorse the utilitarian action than their non-healthcare counterparts in the self-in-majority context. The instrumental harm component was a significant predictor of utilitarian judgments in the healthcare group, but impartial beneficence significantly predicted utilitarian judgments in the non-healthcare group in the self-in-majority context.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04380-z.

Towards common ethical and safe 'behaviour' standards for automated vehicles

Automated vehicles (AVs) aim to dramatically improve traffic safety by reducing or eliminating human error, which remains the leading cause of road crashes. However, commonly accepted standards for the 'safe driving behaviour of machines' are pending and urgently needed. Unless a common understanding of safety as a design value is achieved, different manufacturers' driving styles may emerge, resulting in inconsistent, unpredictable and potentially unsafe 'behaviour' of AVs in certain situations. This paper aims to explore the main gaps and challenges towards establishing shared safety standards for the 'behaviour' of AVs, and contribute to their responsible traffic integration, by reviewing the state-of-the-art on AV safety in the core relevant disciplines: ethics of technology, safety science (engineering & human factors), and standardisation. The ethical and safety aspects investigated include the users' perception of AV safety, the ethical trade-offs in critical decision-making contexts, the pertinence of data-driven approaches for AVs to mimic human behaviour, and the responsibilities of various actors. Moreover, the paper reviews the current safety patterns, metrics (surrogate measures of safety - SMoS) and their thresholds introduced in existing research for three use cases: mixed traffic of AV and conventional vehicles, AV interaction with pedestrians and cyclists, and transition of control from machine to human driver. The results reveal several knowledge gaps within each discipline and highlights the lack of common understanding of safety across disciplines. On the basis of the results, the paper proposes a framework for further research on AV safety, identifying concrete opportunities for interdisciplinary research, with common goals and methodologies, and explicitly indicating the path for transfer of knowledge between sectors.

Forty-Eight Classical Moral Dilemmas in Persian Language: A Validation and Cultural Adaptation Study

Moral dilemmas are a useful tool to investigate empirically, which parameters of a given situation modulate participants’ moral judgment, and in what way.

In an effort to provide moral judgment data from a non-WEIRD culture, we provide the translation and validation of 48 classical moral dilemmas in Persian language. The translated dilemma set was submitted to a validation experiment with N = 82 Iranian participants. The four-factor structure of this dilemma set was confirmed; including Personal Force (Personal, Impersonal), Benefit Recipient (Self, Other), Evitability (Avoidable, Inevitable), and Intentionality (Accidental, Instrumental). When comparing moral judgments of Iranian participants to those of Spanish and Italian participants’ from previous research with the same dilemma set, differences emerged. Iranian participants’ moral judgments were more deontological (i.e., they refrained from harm), than Spanish and Italian participants. Religiosity made participants’ moral judgments more deontological, and also dysphoric mood resulted in a more deontological response style.

Can moral reasoning be modeled in an experiment?

A review of the literature on moral issues indicates that none of the empirical approaches to moral reasoning proposes an experimental approach which controls for such object-related experimental variables as: knowledge, motivation, acceptance of moral norms and consequences of human behavior in moral situations in a single research procedure. A unique element of the proposed experimental method is a multi-stage model determining morality indicators. In the two-phase design experiment, psychology students were asked to create model ethical stories and then conduct an overall assessment of each of these stories. As a result, a base of ethical stories was created with empirical moral indicators (positive, negative, neutral). The patterns in the moral evaluation of ethical stories were determined by identifying three processes (selection, differentiation and integration). The final result is a confirmed design of the experiment and a set of formulas that can be used in education and research on morality reasoning.

A Deeper Look at Autonomous Vehicle Ethics: An Integrative Ethical Decision-Making Framework to Explain Moral Pluralism

The autonomous vehicle (AV) is one of the first commercialized AI-embedded robots to make autonomous decisions. Despite technological advancements, unavoidable AV accidents that result in life-and-death consequences cannot be completely eliminated. The emerging social concern of how an AV should make ethical decisions during unavoidable accidents is referred to as the moral dilemma of AV, which has promoted heated discussions among various stakeholders. However, there are research gaps in explainable AV ethical decision-making processes that predict how AVs' moral behaviors are made that are acceptable from the AV users' perspectives. This study addresses the key question: What factors affect ethical behavioral intentions in the AV moral dilemma? To answer this question, this study draws theories from multidisciplinary research fields to propose the "Integrative ethical decision-making framework for the AV moral dilemma." The framework includes four interdependent ethical decision-making stages: AV moral dilemma issue framing, intuitive moral reasoning, rational moral reasoning, and ethical behavioral intention making. Further, the framework includes variables (e.g., perceived moral intensity, individual factors, and personal moral philosophies) that influence the ethical decision-making process. For instance, the framework explains that AV users from Eastern cultures will tend to endorse a situationist ethics position (high idealism and high relativism), which views that ethical decisions are relative to context, compared to AV users from Western cultures. This proposition is derived from the link between individual factors and personal moral philosophy. Moreover, the framework proposes a dual-process theory, which explains that both intuitive and rational moral reasoning are integral processes of ethical decision-making during the AV moral dilemma. Further, this framework describes that ethical behavioral intentions that lead to decisions in the AV moral dilemma are not fixed, but are based on how an individual perceives the seriousness of the situation, which is shaped by their personal moral philosophy. This framework provides a step-by-step explanation of how pluralistic ethical decision-making occurs, reducing the abstractness of AV moral reasoning processes.

Moral Judgements on the Actions of Self-Driving Cars and Human Drivers in Dilemma Situations From Different Perspectives

Self-driving cars have the potential to greatly improve public safety. However, their introduction onto public roads must overcome both ethical and technical challenges. To further understand the ethical issues of introducing self-driving cars, we conducted two moral judgement studies investigating potential differences in the moral norms applied to human drivers and self-driving cars. In the experiments, participants made judgements on a series of dilemma situations involving human drivers or self-driving cars. We manipulated which perspective situations were presented from in order to ascertain the effect of perspective on moral judgements. Two main findings were apparent from the results of the experiments. First, human drivers and self-driving cars were largely judged similarly. However, there was a stronger tendency to prefer self-driving cars to act in ways to minimize harm, compared to human drivers. Second, there was an indication that perspective influences judgements in some situations. Specifically, when considering situations from the perspective of a pedestrian, people preferred actions that would endanger car occupants instead of themselves. However, they did not show such a self-preservation tendency when the alternative was to endanger other pedestrians to save themselves. This effect was more prevalent for judgements on human drivers than self-driving cars. Overall, the results extend and agree with previous research, again contradicting existing ethical guidelines for self-driving car decision making and highlighting the difficulties with adapting public opinion to decision making algorithms.