Revisiting Inferences of Trustworthiness from Moral Judgments [Registered Report Stage 1 protocol]

Abstract:
Recent research has looked at how people infer the moral character of others based on how they resolve sacrificial moral dilemmas. Previous studies provide consistent evidence for the prediction that those who endorse outcome-maximizing, “utilitarian” judgments are disfavored in social dilemmas and seen as less trustworthy in comparison to those who support harm-rejecting “deontological” judgments. However, previous research investigating this topic has studied only a limited set of sacrificial dilemmas and did not yet test to what extent these effects might be moderated by specific features of the situation described in the sacrificial dilemma (for instance, whether the dilemma involves mortal or non-mortal harm). In the current manuscript, we aim to assess the robustness of previous findings by exploring how trust inference of “utilitarian” and “deontological” decision makers is moderated by five different contextual factors.