Consequentialist Thinking Scale
Which of the following statements best characterizes your position on killing? (Select one)
It is never morally permissible to kill someone.
If killing someone will produce greater good than bad consequences, then it is morally permissible to kill that person.
If killing someone will produce greater good then bad consequences, then it is morally obligatory to kill that person.
The several atheists I've seen citing the news stories (I doubt any of the have read the study or even this questionnaire, I doubt they've read the abstract in large number) are crowing that the results show conservatives and religious people are "deontological" thinkers as opposed to liberals who the authors, reportedly, say are "consequentialist" thinkers. Well as a religious person who is very liberal and who has written on this in the past, that result doesn't cover my thinking. I am just about 100% certain that nothing about this "scientific" study tells us a thing about how anyone really thinks or acts, though it might tell us something about how people like to think they think or act or, which I believe is often the case, how people believe they're supposed to say they think.
If you, as I did, asked who got to decide what the "greater good" and "bad consequences" are in deciding whether or not to go with the second or third option, that information doesn't seem to be provided. If you, as I did, saw some problem with both the way the answers were structured and the range of possible responses restricted you are, apparently, thinking too hard for a study published in a reviewed psychological journal. Since they state, at the bottom of the "Scale" the form of citation they want, I'll give that the way they asked.
Piazza, J., & Sousa, P. (in press). Religiosity, Political Orientation, and Consequentialist Moral Thinking. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Also useful to know is what they claim for their survey, here is that section of the "Scale" document.
Scores for each action range from 1 (Deontological response) to 2 (Weak Consequentialist response) to 3 (Strong Consequentialist response). Aggregate scores to form an overall index of consequentialist thinking style; higher scores represent increasing sensitivity to consequences in moral decision making
Following the one about killing, a number of other issues, including torture, abortion, lying, stealing, committing incest, cannibalism, betrayal (whatever that means) deception, malicious gossip, breaking promises, breaking the law, committing treason (betrayal of your country or defying governing authorities), posed in virtually identical form with the first one. I'll point out, to start with that in the United States treason has a quite specific legal definition which I don't think this one is consistent with. And "betrayal" isn't defined so that it would be impossible to come to any real answer to the question that honestly means anything. I'll add that anyone who says that it is always wrong to lie, as if that were the way they would govern their lives in each and every possible situation should be suspected as either lying or not thinking very hard about the question.
Frankly, if someone gave me this survey I'd have to hand it back saying that it was impossible to come to any kind of honest response in the way that they ask the question. For example, it's possible to believe that abortion is always or virtually always wrong but to 1. admit that the state shouldn't be able to tell women that they have to carry a pregnancy to term, 2. admit that women who need abortions will get them and that the only alternative to legal, safe abortions are illegal ones or, in many cases, infanticide. 3. etc.
In one of my favorite passages about statistical analysis and how the correct form of it can produce stupid, often predetermined results is, " if you pick a stupid prior, you can get a stupid posterior." Or, in this case, ask a stupid question you'll get a stupid answer. And a question can be stupid because it won't come up with an answer nuanced enough to tell you anything. This is one of the many examples of that kind of stupid question. There is no way for this questionare to tell you anything about 1. how people really think about these questions, 2. how they would behave in a real life situation. Anyone who doesn't admit that they would lie to the Nazis to save Jews is a moral moron who is probably lying or too stupid to tell you what they'd do in real life. If they betrayed Jews to Nazis knowing they would likely be tortured and murdered, the motive is unlikely to be true to a strong sense of moral dictates against lying.
Update: Since I'm feeling guilty about not doing what I should do and weeding because the temperature is too close to 90 degrees, I'll point out a few other problems.
1. The "deontologicalist" option is a simple black and white one with no alternative to the thing "always" being wrong. Few, if any, people would deny the possibility that it is moral to take the chance of killing someone who is trying to kill someone else. The alleged "consequentialist" option comes in a grey and a black and white option.
2. I doubt anyone really takes the extreme "consequentialist" option in real life, though I can well imagine people flaky enough to pretend they do. Really, a moral requirement to have an abortion, torture someone, commit incest. Let me just repeat that last one, the loony psychologists asked people if because someone, undesignated by their question, perhaps a father's or a mother's boyfriend, decides that it would produce "greater good than bad consequences" that they would, by, uh, "virtue?" of that "IT WOULD BE MORALLY OBLIGATORY TO HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH A FAMILY MEMBER!!!" Just in case someone looking at this didn't bother to look at the link to the "Scale" document where that really is one of the insane options that these researchers gave and which made their study worthy of inclusion in a peer reviewed journal. The next one is about a moral obligation to commit cannibalism. In case that last one didn't set off this scientific instrument.
Second update: Yikes. Did I ever make some typos in the version of this that has been up for the past several hours. I should have a blog for this time of year called "Bloggging on Benadryl." I just created it so, I got dibs on the name.
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