@article{ref1,
title="The influence of war on moral judgments about harm",
journal="European journal of social psychology",
year="2019",
author="Watkins, Hanne M. and Laham, Simon",
volume="49",
number="3",
pages="447-460",
abstract="How does war influence moral judgments about harm? While the general rule is &quot;thou shalt not kill,&quot; war appears to provide an exception to the moral prohibition on intentional harm. In three studies (n = 263, n = 557, n = 793), we quantify the difference in moral judgments across peace and war contexts, and explore two possible explanations for the difference. The findings demonstrate that third-party observers judge a trade-off of one life for five as more morally acceptable in war than in peace, especially if the one person is from an outgroup of the person making the trade-off. In addition, the robust difference in moral judgments across &quot;switch&quot; and &quot;footbridge&quot; trolley problems is attenuated in war compared to in peace. The present studies have implications for moral psychology researchers who use war-based scenarios to study broader cognitive or affective processes. If the war context changes judgments of moral scenarios by triggering group-based reasoning or altering the perceived structure of the moral event, using such scenarios to make decontextualized claims about moral judgment may not be warranted.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1099-0992",
doi="10.1002/ejsp.2393",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2393"
}