“We have provided the first examination of how the domains and aspects of the Big Five traits are linked with moral judgment.
In both of our studies, the intellect aspect of openness/intellect was the strongest predictor of consequentialist inclinations after holding constant other personality traits. Thus, intellectually curious people—those who are motivated to explore and reflect upon abstract ideas—are more inclined to judge the morality of behaviors according to the consequences they produce.
Our other main finding, which emerged very consistently across both studies and our different indices of moral judgment, was a unique association between politeness and stronger deontological inclinations. This means that individuals who are more courteous, respectful, and adherent to salient social norms, tend to judge the morality of an action not by its consequences, but rather by its alignment with particular moral rules, duties, or rights.”
Thus, intellectually curious people—those who are motivated to explore and reflect upon abstract ideas—are more inclined to judge the morality of behaviors according to the consequences they produce.
Notably in the EA Survey we measured Need for Cognition respondents scored ludicrously highly, with the maximum response for each item being the modal response.
Interesting. It may be worth noting how support for consequentialism is measured in this paper.
In our first study, we use a self-report measure of consequentialist (vs. deontological) thinking to examine participant responses to a range of morally questionable actions (beyond sacrifice), many of which people are likely to encounter in real life (e.g., lying, breaking a promise, engaging in malicious gossip, or breaking the law) .
[Study 2] … a series of moral dilemmas—analogous to trolley/footbridge problems—that were either congruent or incongruent in terms their representation of deontological and consequentialist principles.
[W]e caution that our inferences are warranted for consequentialism, but perhaps not for utilitarianism. We have shown that intellect predicts moral judgments based upon a consideration of consequences (Study 1) and the acceptability of instrumental harm in increasing aggregate welfare (Study 2). Neither of these capture additional aspects of utilitarianism concerned with impartial maximization of the greater good (see Kahane et al., 2018). Future research might thus extend our present focus to explore the role of personality in predicting multiple dimensions of utilitarianism (e.g., impartiality versus instrumental harm; Kahane et al., 2018) and, indeed, different forms of consequentialism (e.g., those grounded in hedonistic versus non-hedonistic conceptions of the good) and deontology (e.g., agent-centered versus patient-centered).
New paper: Personality and moral judgment: Curious consequentialists and polite deontologists https://psyarxiv.com/73bfv/
“We have provided the first examination of how the domains and aspects of the Big Five traits are linked with moral judgment.
In both of our studies, the intellect aspect of openness/intellect was the strongest predictor of consequentialist inclinations after holding constant other personality traits. Thus, intellectually curious people—those who are motivated to explore and reflect upon abstract ideas—are more inclined to judge the morality of behaviors according to the consequences they produce.
Our other main finding, which emerged very consistently across both studies and our different indices of moral judgment, was a unique association between politeness and stronger deontological inclinations. This means that individuals who are more courteous, respectful, and adherent to salient social norms, tend to judge the morality of an action not by its consequences, but rather by its alignment with particular moral rules, duties, or rights.”
This is probably mentioned in the paper, but the Cognitive Reflection Test is also associated with utilitarianism, Need for Cognition is associated with utilitarianism, Actively Open-minded Thinking is associated with utilitarianism and numeracy is associated with utilitarianism. Note that I don’t endorse all of these papers’ conclusions (for one thing, some are using the simple ‘trolley paradigm’ which I think likely isn’t capturing utilitarianism very well).
Notably in the EA Survey we measured Need for Cognition respondents scored ludicrously highly, with the maximum response for each item being the modal response.
Interesting. It may be worth noting how support for consequentialism is measured in this paper.