The Moral Sentence; Is It Right to Penalize People of Generalized Social Classes by a Crowd-Sourced Judging of Peers?

Overview

Basically, “The Moral Sentence” is a survey where tests subject compared two people with varying descriptions of their wealth and moral behavior. From that, the test subjects had to decide which of the two received a life sentence. There were three variants of the survey; the first simply being the comparison and decision. The second had a tag underneath one of the descriptors with the words “GUILTY”, the test subject was informed that they had to pick this descriptor specifically. The third had a similar tag, but instead it was a fake percentage of “past test-takers” agreeing that the test subject should pick this descriptor. The second test was to measure obedience to the tag, the third test measuring conformity by suggesting answers from peers. In all variants, the test subjects were informed that they can choose whoever they want regardless of descriptors or tags. The results are that people are more susceptible to simply being told who to pick regardless of description, their own decision, or peer suggestion. Ultimately, any system that takes and compares profiles of people to make autonomous decisions on any scale is highly unethical. As well as being able to make heavy punishments off profiling alone. To take from this, however, is that even under drastically vague situations people still do what they’re told to do even when they have information that rivals their own moral compass.

Competition history

• ISEF 2017 Behavioral and Social Sciences · Entry BEHA011

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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