The drunk utilitarian: Blood alcohol concentration predicts utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas

Aaron A. Duke and Laurent Bègueb

Cognition

Volume 134, January 2015, Pages 121–127

Highlights

• Greene’s dual-process theory of moral reasoning needs revision.

• Blood alcohol concentration is positively correlated with utilitarianism.

• Self-reported disinhibition is positively correlated with utilitarianism.

• Decreased empathy predicts utilitarianism better than increased deliberation.

Abstract

The hypothetical moral dilemma known as the trolley problem has become a methodological cornerstone in the psychological study of moral reasoning and yet, there remains considerable debate as to the meaning of utilitarian responding in these scenarios. It is unclear whether utilitarian responding results primarily from increased deliberative reasoning capacity or from decreased aversion to harming others. In order to clarify this question, we conducted two field studies to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication on utilitarian responding. Alcohol holds promise in clarifying the above debate because it impairs both social cognition (i.e., empathy) and higher-order executive functioning. Hence, the direction of the association between alcohol and utilitarian vs. non-utilitarian responding should inform the relative importance of both deliberative and social processing systems in influencing utilitarian preference. In two field studies with a combined sample of 103 men and women recruited at two bars in Grenoble, France, participants were presented with a moral dilemma assessing their willingness to sacrifice one life to save five others. Participants’ blood alcohol concentrations were found to positively correlate with utilitarian preferences (r = .31, p < .001) suggesting a stronger role for impaired social cognition than intact deliberative reasoning in predicting utilitarian responses in the trolley dilemma. Implications for Greene’s dual-process model of moral reasoning are discussed.

The entire article is here.

Equitable Access to Care — How the United States Ranks Internationally

Karen Davis, Ph.D., and Jeromie Ballreich, M.H.S.
N Engl J Med 2014; 371:1567-1570
October 23, 2014
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1406707

Here are two excerpts:

According to a 2013 Commonwealth Fund survey of adults in 11 high-income countries, the United States ranks last on measures of financial access to care as well as of availability of care on nights and weekends. Uninsured people in the United States are particularly likely to report encountering barriers to care.

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The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland stand out as leaders in ensuring equitable financial access to care. Switzerland, which provides coverage through nonprofit private insurance plans with deductibles, ensures that cost sharing is lower for lower-income individuals. The United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden have public health care systems for the entire population with little or no patient cost sharing and allow a limited role for private insurance. France has a public insurance system, and Germany has a social insurance system with competing private “sickness funds.”

The entire article is here.

The Ethicist Who Crossed the Line

By Brad Wolverton
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published October 24, 2014

She was everywhere, and seemingly everyone’s friend, a compassionate do-gooder who worked long hours with underprepared students while balancing several jobs, including directing a center on ethics.

On Wednesday the world learned something else about Jeanette M. Boxill: Her own ethics were malleable.

Most of the blame fell on Julius E. Nyang’oro, a former department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his longtime assistant, Deborah Crowder, after they were identified as the chief architects of a widespread academic scandal there.

The entire story is here.

Human-subjects research: The ethics squad

By Elie Golgin
Nature
Originally published October 21, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Ethical dilemmas in research are nothing new; what is new is that scientists can go to formal ethics consultancies such as Silber's to get advice. Unlike the standard way that scientists receive ethical guidance, through institutional review boards (IRBs), these services offer non-binding counsel. And because they do not form part of the regulatory process, they can weigh in on a wider range of issues — from mundane matters of informed consent and study protocol to controversial topics such as the use of experimental Ebola treatments — and offer more creative solutions.

The consulting services are “a really new area”, says Joshua Crites, a research ethicist at the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine in Hershey. “Even some of the most basic questions get complicated really quickly, and it's better to have a group of ethicists working together to sort this out.”

The entire article is here.

Researchers retract bogus, Dr. Oz-touted study on green coffee bean weight-loss pills

By Abby Phillip
The Washington Post
Originally published October 22, 2014

Researchers have retracted a bogus study that was used by a company to validate weight-loss claims for green coffee bean pills, one of several questionable supplements being scrutinized by federal regulators.

The study, which was conducted in India but written by researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, initially claimed that people who used the supplement lost 16 percent of their body fat (about about 18 pounds each) with or without diet and exercise.

The entire story is here.

U.S Troops and Patients Were Used as Malaria Guinea Pigs

By Bill Briggs
NBC News

Tens of thousands of mental patients and troops unknowingly became malaria test subjects during the 1940s — part of a secret federal rush to cure a dread disease and win a world war, according to a book published Tuesday that exposes vast, previously unknown breaches of medical ethics.

“The Malaria Project” — operating via the same covert White House machinery that drove the Manhattan Project — tasked doctors with removing malaria from naturally exposed U.S. troops then injecting those strains into people with syphilis and schizophrenia, reports author Karen Masterson, who researched files at the National Archives.

Some details of the project have been previously reported, but the book's new revelations renew debate over the ethics of using unsuspecting people as test subjects — similar to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study on low-income black men.

The entire story is here.

More Insurers Put Spending Limits On Medical Treatments

By Michelle Andrews
NPR
Originally published October 21, 2014

To clamp down on health care costs, a growing number of employers and insurers are putting limits on how much they'll pay for certain medical services such as knee replacements, lab tests and complex imaging.

A recent study found that savings from such moves may be modest, however, and some analysts question whether "reference pricing," as it's called, is good for consumers.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which administers the health insurance benefits for 1.4 million state workers, retirees and their families, has one of the more established reference pricing systems.

The entire article is here.

Why it matters whether you believe in free will

By Rebecca Roache
Practical Ethics Blog
Originally published May 23, 2013

Scientific discoveries about how our behaviour is causally influenced often prompt the question of whether we have free will (for a general discussion, see here). This month, for example, the psychologist and criminologist Adrian Raine has been promoting his new book, The Anatomy of Violence, in which he argues that there are neuroscientific explanations of the behaviour of violent criminals. He argues that these explanations might be taken into account during sentencing, since they show that such criminals cannot control their violent behaviour to the same extent that (relatively) non-violent people can, and therefore that these criminals have reduced moral responsibility for their crimes. Our criminal justice system, along with our conceptions of praise and blame, and moral responsibility more generally, all presuppose that we have free will. If science can reveal it to be an illusion, some of the most fundamental features of our society are undermined.

The entire article is here.

Why Doctors need Stories

By Peter D. Kramer
The New York Times
Originally published October 18, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

I have long felt isolated in this position, embracing stories, which is why I warm to the possibility that the vignette is making a comeback. This summer, Oxford University Press began publishing a journal devoted to case reports. And this month, in an unusual move, the New England Journal of Medicine, the field’s bellwether, opened an issue with a case history involving a troubled mother, daughter and grandson. The contributors write: “Data are important, of course, but numbers sometimes imply an order to what is happening that can be misleading. Stories are better at capturing a different type of ‘big picture.’ ”

Stories capture small pictures, too. I’m thinking of the anxious older man given Zoloft. That narrative has power.

The entire article is here.