One often neglected aspect of moral decision-making is that expressed biases can influence our reputation both negatively and positively. This paper systematically investigated how person perceptions of warmth (e.g. “how kind does [s]he seems?”) and competence (e.g. “how capable does [s]he seems?”) are affected by different responses to a medical moral dilemma.

In Study 1 (n = 403), participants recruited from Prolific evaluated six decision-makers (three men and three women) who, when faced with a dilemma where 3 male and 3 female patients were pitted against each other, expressed a preference to help male or female patients, or expressed no preference. The main results were that decision-makers are perceived as the warmest and most competent when they rate both projects as equally attractive, but also that decision-makers are perceived as warmer and more competent if they prefer to help 3 females than if they prefer to help 3 males, especially among female participants and when the decision-maker is a man.

In Study 2 (n = 402), the dilemma instead involved choosing to help either 4 male or 3 female patients (implying that the projects differ in efficacy). Here, the main finding was that male participants evaluated it to be warmer and more competent to help 4 male than to help 3 female patients, while female participants perceived it to be warmer (but equally competent) to help 3 females.

This research is one of the first to empirically test the reputational costs and benefits of expressing different types of moral preferences.

Authors:
Arvid Erlandsson, Linköping University, Sweden
Carolina Bråhn, Linköping University, Sweden
Per Andersson, Linköping University, Sweden

About the Presenter(s)
Arvid Erlandsson is a senior associate professor at Linköping University in Sweden and a member of the Judgement-Emotion-Decision-Intuition (JEDI) Lab.

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