(4 points)
Take a sheet of paper, put your name and the date on it and Activity 4 on it.
- Step 1: How are you feeling right now? Make an overall rating of your mood/adjustment/quality of life right now: 0 – 10. Zero is “awful, horrible, bad, crummy day” and 10 is “feel great, everything is going well, I can handle anything”
- Step 2: Do you pull the switch? Write “yes” [throw the switch and sacrifice the one life to save five] or “no” [let the trolley kill the five]
- Step 3: How are you feeling right now? Make a rating, same as before: 0 – 10
- Step 4: relax, take a breath, notice the seat under you, the feelings in your hand, arms, legs, feet; feel you breath moving in and out
- Step 5: Do you push the person onto the track, taking one life and saving five? write “yes” [push person onto track] or “no” [take no action]
- Step 6: How are you feeling right now? Make a rating, same as before: 0 – 10
Discussion of Trolley problem
The Trolley problem has served as a “thought experiement” for philosophers for many years, and has been cast in different forms. Phillippa Foot is usually credited with introducing the “modern form” of this problem in 1967. Earlier versions of such ethical dilemas had been discussed by various people.
More recently it has become the basic of psychological experiments on decision making, ethics, and the neurological basis of actions.
Sapolsky (2017) reports that, overall, between 70% and 90% of respondents report they would throw the switch in the first condition; and reports that 70% to 90% of respondents say they would not push the person onto the track in the second condition.
fMRI studies by Greene and associates (2013) report that the decision to throw the switch in condition 1 is associated (correlated) with significant activation in the dlPFC and the decision to not push the person onto the tracks is associated with significant amygdala and vmPFC activation in condition 2
and the greater the vmPRC activation in condition 2, the decreased the likelihood of pushing the person onto the track.
Did anyone think about jumping on the tracks youself in condition 2?, sacrificing yourself to save five other people? The possibility is usually controlled out in experiments (either the other person is very large (bulk needed to divert the trolley) or has a big backpack on. What kind of neurological basis might such self-sacrifice reflect? Could this be enhanced by compassion meditation [Loving-Kindness meditation, also called compassion or Metta meditation]”, Dr. Davidson might think so (Davidson & Begley, 2012; Goleman & Davidson 2017).
Running into a burning building to save others without regard for your own safety might not reflect prefrontal decision making, but might be more a function of limbic and cerebellar (well rehearsed motor activities) activity. When inerviewed afterwards, people who have actually done “heroic” things often tell us, “I didn’t think about it, I just did it.” What do we make of this?
And, oh yes, hypothetical situations are not the same as actual events. See Dries Bostyn, Sybren Sevenhart, & Arne Roets (2018), “Of mine, men, and trolleys: Hypothetical judgement versus real-life behaivor in trolley-style moral dilemmas”.
Trival pursuit: Under what circumstances would evolutionary theorists of motivation suggest such self-sacrifice might be selected for (hint: I would give up my life if the group of 5 contained one identical twin, two full siblings, or eight first cousins [opps, only five people, guess they’re toast])?