In a number of ethical dilemmas I’ve been discussing with students in class, utilitarian positions have probably been the most popular. Whether looking at torture (variants of the ticking time bomb, variants of the raft dilemma, or the morality of suicide) students have favoured adopting a calculus approach which looks at the balance between pain and pleasure and solutions that maximises the latter.

I’ve made the point on a number of occasions that an ethical position says something about what kind of person you are. Utilitarians tend to think that the morality of an action is partly determined by its intended outcome. Those opposed to such a position usually emphasise that there is more to morality than a concern with the consequences of actions: there are principles that guide action.

In The Mismeasure of Morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas, two psychologists Bartels and Pizarro from Columbia and Cornell Universities  explore this idea systematically and come up with some interesting findings:

the endorsement of utilitarian solutions to a set of commonly-used moral dilemmas correlates with a set of psychological traits that can be characterized as emotionally callous and manipulative—traits that most would perceive as not only psychologically unhealthy, but also morally undesirable.

So, if you ever find yourself adrift on a raft in the middle of the indian ocean and you’re surrounded by utilitarians, you might want to think about making a swim for it!