Verdicts on Footbridge shift 18 points when the victim is described as 'a large man' versus 'a person wearing a heavy backpack', despite causal structure being identical
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[no evidence]
[quiet]
[stable]
[undecided]
Halloran and Ntumba (2021) ran a 2x2 vignette study (N=2,600) holding the causal role of the victim's mass constant while varying whether the mass was intrinsic or carried. Endorsement of pushing rose from 14% to 32% in the backpack condition. Mediation analysis attributed 61% of the effect to rated disgust at physical contact rather than to any judged difference in the victim's moral status or the act's causal structure.
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Clear
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Cited as evidence in 1 claim:
Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for…
(supports)
cited by (1)
cited as supports by:
[+0]
Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments
experimental-philosophy
metaethics
moral-psychology
philosophy
virtues: Accurate unrated · Falsifiable unrated · Clear unrated · Novel unrated · Important unrated
this claim:
Verdicts on Footbridge shift 18 points when the victim is described as 'a large man' versus 'a person wearing a heavy backpack', despite causal structure being identical
supports (1)
supports:
[+0]
Endorsement differences between physical-contact and lever variants vanish under a 90-second forced-deliberation delay (Petrossian, 2022)
dual-process
moral-psychology
virtues: Accurate unrated · Falsifiable unrated · Clear unrated · Novel unrated · Important unrated
opposes (0)
no opposing evidence yet
Evidence Supporting (1)
Endorsement differences between physical-contact and lever variants vanish unde…
If the contact effect is eliminable by deliberation, it looks like a processing artifact rather than a moral commitment — which is what the parent claim needs. But it cuts both ways: a defender of the cases can say deliberation is precisely the filtering procedure that rescues intuitions, and the artifact is filterable after all.
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