Social roles and the moral judgement of acts and omissions

Three experiments investigated how moral judgements of harmful acts and omissions are affected by information about social roles. Subjects were given vignettes in which the relationship between an actor and victim was varied along the dimensions of solidarity (e.g. friends versus strangers) and hierachy (e.g. superior versus equal; the terms are from Hamilton & Sanders, 1981). Subjects were asked to judge the morality of the actor in each case, both for a harmful omission (e.g. intentionally withholding the truth) and for an equivalent act (e.g. actively lying). Subjects judged the bahaviour worse in the act than the omission. Judgements were also affected by role relationships. The act-omission difference was also greater in the low-responsibility roles. Responses to the high-responsibility roles seem to reflect in a consequentialist perspective, focusing on outcomes rather than prohibitions.