Killing one person in order to save five by throwing a switch that diverts a runaway trolley is judged as more morally acceptable than killing one person in order to save five by pushing a stranger directly into the path of the oncoming trolley.This best illustrates that moral judgments may reflect
A) postconventional reasoning.
B) gut-level intuitions.
C) social identity.
D) formal operational thought.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This scenario is a classic example of the trolley problem and demonstrates the role of gut-level intuitions in moral judgments. The fact that people generally find it more acceptable to throw a switch that indirectly results in the death of one person, rather than actively pushing someone to their death, suggests that our moral judgments are influenced not only by reason and logic but also by emotional reactions and intuitions. This is consistent with research on the dual-process theory of moral judgment, which proposes that moral judgments are the result of both conscious, deliberative processing and automatic, emotional processing.

Killing One Person in Order to Save Five by Throwing