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The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited: Does Alcohol Really Increase Utilitarianism in Moral Judgment?

Paruzel-Czachura, Mariola, Pypno, Katarzyna, Everett, Jim A.C., Białek, Michał, Gawronski, Bertram (2021) The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited: Does Alcohol Really Increase Utilitarianism in Moral Judgment? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49 (1). pp. 20-31. ISSN 0146-1672. (doi:10.1177/01461672211052120) (KAR id:92040)

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Abstract

The “drunk utilitarian” phenomenon suggests that people are more likely to accept harm for the greater good when they are under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon conflicts with the ideas that (1) acceptance of pro-sacrificial harm requires inhibitory control of automatic emotional responses to the idea of causing harm and (2) alcohol impairs inhibitory control. The current preregistered experiment aimed to provide deeper insights into the effects of alcohol on moral judgments by using a formal modeling approach to disentangle three factors in moral dilemma judgments and by distinguishing between instrumental harm and impartial beneficence as two distinct dimensions of utilitarian psychology. Despite the use of a substantially larger sample and higher doses of alcohol compared to the ones in prior studies, alcohol had no significant effect on moral judgments. The results pose a challenge to the idea that alcohol increases utilitarianism in moral judgments.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/01461672211052120
Uncontrolled keywords: alcohol, CNI model, moral dilemmas, moral judgment, utilitarianism
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Jim Everett
Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2021 11:23 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 08:19 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/92040 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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