Ethical Dilemmas Between Runaway Trolley And The Five People

The study conducted was inspired by a family of ethical dilemmas familiar to contemporary moral philosophers. Two dilemmas were under study. In the first dilemma, a runaway trolley is headed for five people. If nothing is done these five people will be killed. In this dilemma there is only one way to save these five people from death. That way is by hitting a switch that will force the trolley onto an another set of tracks. Doing so will save the five people, but it will kill one person. In the second dilemma, you are on a footbridge. This footbridge is between the approaching trolley and the five people. In this dilemma, there is only one way to save the five people. That way is by pushing a large stranger standing next to you off of the bridge. The five people will be

The hypothesis the researchers made is that, “some moral dilemmas engage emotional processing to a greater extent than others, and that it is these differences in emotional engagement that affect people’s judgments.” What is then predicted is the areas of the brain associated with emotion will be more active during contemplation of dilemmas that engage emotional processing to a greater extent. Two experiments were then conducted. In Experiment 1 and 2 nine participants were asked to respond to a total of sixty dilemmas while undergoing brain scanning using fMRI. The results from Experiment 1 showed that medial frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and angular gyrus, bilateral were significantly more active in the moral-personal condition than in the moral-impersonal and the non-moral conditions. Each of these areas have been associated with emotion. Experiment 2 replicated The purpose of conducting Experiment 1 and provided behavioral data concerning the nine participants’ judgments and reaction