We expected people to feel less culpable about the outcome if they acted in accordance with their superior’s injunction than if they made the decision themselves, but they felt more culpable when they followed orders

Feelings of Culpability: Just Following Orders Versus Making the Decision Oneself. Maayan S. Malter, Sonia S. Kim, Janet Metcalfe. Psychological Science, April 2, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211002821

Abstract: In five experiments (N = 1,490), participants were asked to imagine themselves as programmers of self-driving cars who had to decide how to program the car to respond in a potential accident: spare the driver or spare pedestrians. Alternatively, participants imagined that they were a mayor grappling with difficult moral dilemmas concerning COVID-19. Either they, themselves, had to decide how to program the car or which COVID-19 policy to implement (high-agency condition) or they were told by their superior how to act (low-agency condition). After learning that a tragic outcome occurred because of their action, participants reported their felt culpability. Although we expected people to feel less culpable about the outcome if they acted in accordance with their superior’s injunction than if they made the decision themselves, participants actually felt more culpable when they followed their superior’s order. Some possible reasons for this counterintuitive finding are discussed.

Keywords: decision making, judgment, morality, autonomous vehicles, perspective taking, COVID-19, trolley problem, agency, Nuremberg defense, open data, open materials