#1182 Dries Bostyn: How People Respond to Trolley Dilemmas

Nov 28, 2025

Dries Bostyn, a social psychologist and moral cognition expert from Ghent University, delves into the fascinating world of trolley dilemmas. He breaks down how people make moral choices, comparing utilitarian and deontological responses. Discussing a striking experiment with real electroshocks, he reveals how motivations can vary greatly. Bostyn explores principles of action and intention, the role of cognitive ability, and even the implications of personality traits on moral decisions, leaving listeners questioning their own ethical frameworks.

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INSIGHT

Trolley Dilemmas Frame Harm Versus Action

Trolley dilemmas pit minimizing harm against refusing to actively harm others.
They reveal tensions between outcome-based reasoning and rule-based avoidance of direct harm.

INSIGHT

Variants Dramatically Shift Judgments

Responses depend strongly on the dilemma variant; diverting a trolley often yields utilitarian choices while pushing a person yields deontological choices.
Small changes in scenario structure reliably shift moral judgments.

INSIGHT

Conformity Favors Socially Safe Choices

People conform more to deontological majorities than to utilitarian ones because deontological choices are more socially safe.
Moral judgments serve communicative and reputational functions, not just personal reasoning.

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Dr. Dries Bostyn is a social psychologist, statistician and philosopher currently doing a BOF senior postdoctoral fellowship at the Social Psychology Lab at Ghent Unversity. His primary research focus is the study of moral psychology.

In this episode, we talk about trolley-type moral dilemmas. We start by discussing what they are, and their different types. We talk about an experiment where people had to decide whether to allow two confederates to receive a painful electroshock or shock a third confederate. We discuss the action principle, the contact principle, and the intention principle in sacrificial dilemmas. We talk about iterative sacrificial dilemmas. We discuss the dual-process model for moral cognition, whether cognitive ability is correlated with a preference for utilitarianism, and whether trolley problems are realistic. We also talk about how people infer the moral character of others based on how they resolve sacrificial moral dilemmas, and whether people choose to exit social dilemmas in real life.

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