The influence of personal proximity and framing on moral decision behaviour

Abstract

"It is a truism that the rationality of a decision can only be analyzed through its context and the reasons that the decider had. This approach broadens the concept of heuristics, which underlie human decision behavior. It is possible, at least for moral decisions, to deduce all relevant heuristics from basic philosophical ethical positions. This thought interloops the explanatory power from the two decision theories of Kahneman & Tverskys (2000) and Gigerenzer & Selten (2001) to a model of context dependent application of incommensurable principles. To proof this claim the classical Asian disease dilemma (ADP), used by Kahneman and Tversky in 1981 to show the framing effect, was varied by degrees of personal proximity. The ADP was understood as a dilemma with a moral context. The variation of personal proximity influenced the answer behavior and led to a disappearance of the framing effect at interindividual proximity. The main reasons accounted for answering the ADP were of utilitarian and deontological nature. With increasing proximity hedonistic reasons became more important while utilitarian reasons diminished. Different framings were accompanied by different importance of intuitionism." (author's abstract)