Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research suggests that participants may be susceptible to confirmation bias after making decisions in moraldilemmas. We manipulated the type of moral dilemmas (personal or impersonal) and the framing of the question promptingparticipants to respond (emphasizing saving five people or sacrificing one person). The actors in the dilemmas were representedby a series of silhouettes. Eye tracking data revealed that both manipulations had an effect on participants’ gaze. Furtheranalysis of utilitarian choices has shown that there were no framing effects of the prompting question when the dilemmas wereimpersonal. The data suggests that participants’ subsequent gaze patterns are sensitive to both how the situation is describedand the framing of their hypothetical actions. Taken together, our results provide some support to the claim that confirmationbias may arise after making moral decisions.