The role of probabilistic reasoning in moral decision making
has seen relatively little research, despite having potentially
profound consequences for our models of moral cognition. To
rectify this, two experiments were undertaken in which
participants were presented with moral dilemmas with
additional information designed to anchor judgements about
how likely the dilemma’s outcomes were. It was found that
these anchoring values significantly altered how permissible
the dilemmas were found when they were presented both
explicitly and implicitly. This was the case even for dilemmas
typically seen as eliciting deontological judgements.
Implications of this finding for cognitive models of moral
decision making are discussed.