Investigating differences in moral judgement between the Armed Forces of Malta and the general public

Abstract

The issue of moral judgement and decision-making has been a popular area of research in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science. Vast research has focused on the segregation of utilitarianism and deontology and has attempted to answer questions pertaining to how factors affecting cognitive processing ability, such as load and time pressure, affect these two modes of moral judgement. What is more, results from previous research reflect disagreement, with some studies supporting the dual process theory which presents utilitarianism and deontology as two separate cognitive processing systems, and others rejecting this separation and favouring a more collaborative approach. However, little research has been made to compare moral judgement between specialised groups who might be trained to adopt certain moral attitudes and make decisions at a faster rate. The present study chose to address this issue by comparing the moral decisions made, and the speed with which they are made, between members of the Armed Forces of Malta and the general public, both being of Maltese nationality. New versions of the conventional trolley dilemmas were created in order to address the extensive criticism surrounding the overused dilemmas. The dilemmas in the present study were divided into military and non-military, depending on the gravity of the situation. These 14 dilemmas were recorded and subjected to 50 members of the AFM and 50 members of the general public, who had to decide whether to make a utilitarian or a deontological option in each dilemma. Results showed that members of the AFM were faster at answering both dilemma categories and at making both utilitarian and deontological decisions. Furthermore, the present study is in accordance with previous findings regarding the slower reaction times when presented with military dilemmas. However, our results oppose previous findings which proposed that utilitarian decisions are linked to an increase in RT and also oppose results of previous research pertaining to a decrease in utilitarian decisions when presented with more difficult dilemmas. This could reflect the importance of including a specialised group in our sample, who are trained to make rapid decisions under pressure, and even the significance of creating new dilemmas which are more relatable and realistic than the conventional dilemmas.