Human's moral judgements towards different social actors: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

The proliferation of artificial intelligence may pose new challenges to people's moral judgements. We examined moral judgements towards different social actors and their influencing factors in children, adolescents and adults. Moral judgements were measured with ship problems which will ask participants whether they would choose to save humans, dogs, humanoid robots or animaloid robots. Results showed that (1) both adolescents and adults considered humans morally most important, followed by dogs, humanoid robots and animaloid robots. Children have not yet developed the tendency to morally prioritize humanoid robots over animaloid robots; (2) Individuals' moral judgements are influenced by their age, anthropomorphism and animacy of social actors; (3) With the development of individuals, animacy of social actors always have a greater impact on individuals' moral judgements than anthropomorphism of social actors. Findings indicated that the concept of moral judgement is more complex in the era of artificial intelligence and requires more attention from developmental psychology researchers.