The Relation of Language Context and Religiosity to Trilemma Judgments

Utilitarian judgments maximize benefit for the most people, whereas deontological judgments are based on moral norms. Previous work shows that people tend to make more utilitarian judgments in their second compared to their native language, whereas higher religiosity is associated with more deontolo...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs: Barabadi, Elyas (Auteur) ; Rahmani Tabar, Mohsen (Auteur) ; Booth, James R. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Sage 2021
Dans: Journal of cross-cultural psychology
Année: 2021, Volume: 52, Numéro: 6, Pages: 583-602
Sujets non-standardisés:B and deontological
B foreign language effect
B moral decision making
B Utilitarian
B Religiosity
Accès en ligne: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Résumé:Utilitarian judgments maximize benefit for the most people, whereas deontological judgments are based on moral norms. Previous work shows that people tend to make more utilitarian judgments in their second compared to their native language, whereas higher religiosity is associated with more deontological judgments. However, it is not known whether the effect of language context is moderated by the religiosity of the individual. We hypothesized that more religious participants from all three languages would favor deontological choices irrespective of language context. In order to investigate this, we studied native speakers of Persian who either had Arabic or English as their second language, and all participants were given a standard measure of religiosity. Decision making was measured by the classic trolley trilemma in which a participant could “push” a person to save the lives of more people which is considered a utilitarian judgment. Alternatively, they could “switch” a track to save the lives of more people (“indirect”), or do nothing (“inaction”), both of which are considered deontological. Consistent with the literature showing more utilitarian judgments in the second language, English participants preferred the push option, whereas Persian participants favored the inaction option. L2 Arabic participants more often chose the indirect option. However, participants’ religiosity moderated this effect of language context. Although L2 Arabic participants’ choices were not influenced by religiosity, higher religiosity in the L2 English and L1 Persian groups was associated with more deontological choices.
ISSN:1552-5422
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal of cross-cultural psychology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/00220221211033987