Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Moral dilemma research has been used for decades to evaluate moral decision-making across a myriad of contexts. These dilemmas, while philosophical in creation, have evolved into a tool to measure moral decision-making. The current study aimed to evaluate differences in moral decision-making when working with a competitive peer while also being presented with dilemmas more realistic than typically found in moral decision research. Participants rated their agreement with 5 moral dilemmas by themselves, rating agreement with a proposed action on a 6-point Likert scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Then, participants were asked to work together with a confederate through virtual communication to solve these same five dilemmas. However, the confederate was trained to intentionally disagree with the participant, to evaluate how far the participant was willing to adjust from their original responses. Significance was present based on the type of dilemma, abstract vs. realistic, with realistic dilemmas having higher difference in mean responses when working with peers. One dilemma from each condition changed from solo responses when working with a peer, which led to cumulative averages not being an appropriate representation of the data. This implies that, despite significance being found, the findings should be considered carefully. Although a global difference cannot be suggested, there were instances in which the individual dilemma content produced different responses. Ideally, future research should continue to build on these findings that indicate social influence and realism both have an effect on moral decision-making. Realism, as a variable, was evaluated differently in the current study than previous psychological research, and deserves to be studied independently and broadly.

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