Moral Dilemmas in Hospitals: Which Shooting Victim Should Be Saved?

lightning_palm · 2022-04-29T07:31:54+00:00

My very brief summary and own commentary:

There are two victims of a mass shooting presenting to life-saving emergency care. One of the combinations was teenage boy vs teenage girl. They tested both moral deservingness and what the study participants (college students) would actually choose (deservingness scale vs choice scale). On the deservingness scale, there was no significant difference, but on the choice scale, there was a signficiant bias in favor of the teenage girl (contrary to hypothesis 3, which predicted no bias). The authors also stated that approximately 68% chose an equal rating for both scales, meaning that this difference is not driven by the majority of people, which they take to confirm hypothesis 3 (it clearly does not because they predicted no bias but found a significant one, just not one driven by the majority, i.e. > 50%, of people). The way they bring up leadership bias in the gender bias section on page 4, which has little to do with the type of bias they measure, is quite odd. It seems unlikely to arrive at hypothesis 3 given they also cite the 2016 study by FeldmanHall et al. "Moral Chivalry: Gender and Harm Sensitivity Predict Costly Altruism", and elaborating that they know that previous results have confirmed a predisposition to give women higher priority when it comes to protecting them from harm.

All in all, this confirms previous results on the gender empathy gap.

Abstract

Moral judgments can occur either in settings that call for impartiality or in settings that allow for partiality. How effective are impartiality settings such as hospitals in suppressing personal biases? Portrayed as decision-makers in an emergency department, 431 college students made judgments on which of two victims of a mass shooting should receive immediate, life-saving care. Patients differed in ways that could reveal biases, e.g., age (8 vs. 80 years), kinship (stranger vs. cousin), gender (female vs. male), and villain/hero (shooter vs. policeman who stopped him). Participants rated each patient’s moral deservingness to receive immediate care and the likelihood they would choose the patient. Both scales showed young favored over old, cousin (or daughter) over stranger, and policeman over shooter (largest difference). In a hospital-room scenario with high risk of injury from falling, age bias disappeared. With moderate fall risk, age bias reversed and kinship deservingness bias disappeared. Bias decreases when there is a decrease in severity of potential harm to the preferred stakeholder. Settings that call for impartiality are not reliable “boundary conditions” against expressions of bias. In the absence of explicit guidelines for allocating scarce resources, a systematic, objective method of random selection offers a potentially useful strategy.

[…]

(4) contrary to Hypothesis 3, a “teenage girl you don’t know” (M = 3.38, SD = 1.44, N = 424) significantly exceeded ratings for a “teenage boy you don’t know” (M = 3.21, SD = 1.44, N = 424), t(423) = 3.077, p = 0.002, d = 0.19, implying gender bias, which contrasted with the absence of evidence for bias in the moral deservingness ratings (further analyzed, below)

[…]

Regarding the comparison between teen boy and teen girl, further analysis showed that the significantly higher mean for teen girl on the choice scale, and no significant diﬀerence on the deservingness scale, did not represent the choice pattern of most participants. Each participant could show one of three possible outcomes when their ratings were compared for boy and girl (boy – girl): a higher rating for boy than girl (+), a higher rating for girl than boy (–), and equal ratings (0), a total of nine possible combinations across the two scales. The frequency of each combination was calculated and by far the most frequent combination (approximately 68% of the sample) had equal ratings on the two scales, which is consistent with Hypothesis 3. Only about 14% of participants had a pattern showing no diﬀerence on the deservingness scale and a higher rating for the girl on the choice scale.

Title	Moral Dilemmas in Hospitals: Which Shooting Victim Should Be Saved?
Author	lightning_palm
Upvotes	14
Comments	2
Date	April 29, 2022 7:31 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Male_Studies
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Male_Studies/comments/uegl7r/moral_dilemmas_in_hospitals_which_shooting_victim/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Male_Studies/moral-dilemmas-in-hospitals-which-shooting-victim.1215906 https://theredarchive.com/post/1215906

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