Is It Fair to Kill One to Save Five? How Just World Beliefs Shape Sacrificial Moral Decision-making

Sacrificing a target to save a group violates deontological ethics against harm but upholds utilitarian ethics to maximize outcomes. Although theorists examine many factors that influence dilemma decisions, we examined justice concerns: We manipulated the moral character of sacrificial targets, then measured participants’ dilemma responses and just world beliefs. Across four studies ( N=1116), participants considering guilty versus innocent targets scored lower on harm-rejection (deontological) responding, but not outcome-maximizing (utilitarian) responding assessed via process dissociation. Just world beliefs (both personal and general) predicted lower utilitarian and somewhat lower deontological responding, but these effects disappeared when accounting for shared variance with psychopathy. Results suggest that dilemma decisions partly reflect the moral status of sacrificial targets and concerns about the fairness implications of sacrificing innocent targets to save innocent groups.