Question wording and attitudinal ambivalence: COVID, the economy, and Americans' response to a real-life trolley problem

Objective: As the coronavirus pandemic raged throughout 2020, political leaders faced a difficult choice: Should strict social distancing guidelines be maintained until the threat posed by COVID-19 was diminished enough for citizens to return to their regular activities? Or was the economic disruption caused by the pandemic something that was, according to President Trump, "worse than the problem itself"? Methods: We analyze data from a 2020 survey of registered voters. Results: Democrats were more likely than Republicans to resolve the tradeoff in favor of maintaining social distancing over rebuilding the economy. More importantly, we find that when faced with this moral dilemma (measured by one's choice between a utilitarian vs. a deontological approach when confronted with a real-life "trolley problem"), many citizens from both sides of the partisan aisle were of two minds on the subject. Conclusion: Americans are ambivalent about the appropriate government response to COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Triage 4.0: On Death Algorithms and Technological Selection. Is Today's Data- Driven Medical System Still Compatible with the Constitution?

Health data bear great promises for a healthier and happier life, but they also make us vulnerable. Making use of millions or billions of data points, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now creating new benefits. For sure, harvesting Big Data can have great potentials for the health system, too. It can support accurate diagnoses, better treatments and greater cost effectiveness. However, it can also have undesirable implications, often in the sense of undesired side effects, which may in fact be terrible. Examples for this, as discussed in this article, are discrimination, the mechanisation of death, and genetic, social, behavioural or technological selection, which may imply eugenic effects or social Darwinism. As many unintended effects become visible only after years, we still lack sufficient criteria, long-term experience and advanced methods to reliably exclude that things may go terribly wrong. Handing over decision-making, responsibility or control to machines, could be dangerous and irresponsible. It would also be in serious conflict with human rights and our constitution.

Question wording and attitudinal ambivalence: COVID, the economy, and Americans' response to a real‐life trolley problem

Objective Methods Results Conclusion As the coronavirus pandemic raged throughout 2020, political leaders faced a difficult choice: Should strict social distancing guidelines be maintained until the threat posed by COVID‐19 was diminished enough for citizens to return to their regular activities? Or was the economic disruption caused by the pandemic something that was, according to President Trump, "worse than the problem itself"?We analyze data from a 2020 survey of registered voters.Democrats were more likely than Republicans to resolve the tradeoff in favor of maintaining social distancing over rebuilding the economy. More importantly, we find that when faced with this moral dilemma (measured by one's choice between a utilitarian vs. a deontological approach when confronted with a real‐life "trolley problem"), many citizens from both sides of the partisan aisle were of two minds on the subject.Americans are ambivalent about the appropriate government response to COVID‐19. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Social Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell) is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Feelings of Culpability: Just Following Orders Versus Making the Decision Oneself.

In five experiments (N = 1,490), participants were asked to imagine themselves as programmers of self-driving cars who had to decide how to program the car to respond in a potential accident: spare the driver or spare pedestrians. Alternatively, participants imagined that they were a mayor grappling with difficult moral dilemmas concerning COVID-19. Either they, themselves, had to decide how to program the car or which COVID-19 policy to implement (high-agency condition) or they were told by their superior how to act (low-agency condition). After learning that a tragic outcome occurred because of their action, participants reported their felt culpability. Although we expected people to feel less culpable about the outcome if they acted in accordance with their superior's injunction than if they made the decision themselves, participants actually felt more culpable when they followed their superior's order. Some possible reasons for this counterintuitive finding are discussed.