The Ethical Dangers of Deliberative Decision Making

Research on ethical decision making has been heavily influenced by normative decision theories that view intelligent choices as involving conscious deliberation and analysis. Recent developments in moral psychology, however, suggest that moral functions involved in ethical decision making are metaphorical and embodied. The research presented here suggests that deliberative decision making may actually increase unethical behaviors and reduce altruistic motives when it overshadows implicit, intuitive influences on moral judgments and decisions. Three lab experiments explored the potential ethical dangers of deliberative decision making. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that deliberative decision making, activated by a math problem-solving task or by simply framing the choice as a decision rather than an intuitive reaction, increased deception in a one-shot deception game. Experiment 3—which activated systematic thinking or intuitive feeling about the choice to donate to a charity—found that deliberative decision making could also decrease altruism. These findings highlight the potential ethical downsides of a rationalistic approach toward ethical decision making and call for a better understanding of the intuitive nature of moral functioning.