Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We test the importance people attribute to the realization of small gains in outcome value for cases where the decision-maker must competitively distribute significant harm between separate groups. We find that, in line with recent non-consequentialist moral theories, subjects (i) sometimes rank giving those that stand to suffer harm equal chances above maximizing outcome value and (ii) that whether they opt for equal chance procedures (‘coin flips’) depends on the magnitude of the value that can be secured by not offering them. Our findings vindicate the idea that there can be ‘irrelevant utilities’ in cases of competing claims to avoid harm. Our study thus extends existing work on decision-making in conflict of harm cases along several dimensions, and we demonstrate their import for determining which version of ‘partially aggregative’ accounts in normative ethics aligns best with common sense.