Who knows the trolley dilemma?

It's a simple little thought experiment in ethics. Here's a variation:

You are a station master at a railway and a runaway train is speeding through the station. Ahead of it is a split line, and the train is headed down Line A if you do not act. At the end of Line A is a single surveyor, inspecting the tracks, oblivious to the fact there is a train headed for him. At the end of Line B is a group of 4 or 5 workmen doing some maintenance.

You cannot stop the train, but you can redirect it down Line B. Do you?

Most people will answer No. It's a tragedy, but the loss of one life is better than the loss of 5.

You are a station master at a railway and a runaway train is speeding through the station. Ahead of it is a split line, and the train is headed down Line A if you do not act. At the end of Line A is a group of 4 or 5 workmen doing some maintenance, oblivious to the fact there is a train headed for them. At the end of Line B is a single surveyor, inspecting the tracks.

You cannot stop the train, but you can redirect it down Line B. Do you?

Many people will answer Yes for the same reason. The loss of one life is a tragedy, yet your actions (though difficult and emotional) will save the lives of many.

Finally,

You're standing on top of a bridge with a work colleague (this is the first time you met him, you know nothing of him, and you've not exchanged any words) and you notice a runaway train (underneath the bridge) is headed for a group of workmen. You know (being a veteran train-yard employee) that you can stop the train if you pushed your work colleague off the bridge and in-front of the train. Assuming it is not an option to jump yourself; do you push your colleague?

And here the same reasoning applies - the loss of one life is a tragedy, and the saving of many lives is virtuous. Yet here people come unstuck. There's a hundred different questions people will ask to avoid answering, "Can I push a weight instead of them?", "Why can't I jump?", "Can I yell to the workers?” All valid questions, but missing the point. The point is - do you act and save the lives of many, for the life of one? There are also some valid perspectives, some people say the act of killing is always wrong, thus to let 5 people die is the moral decision. Others may also argue that it's fate or destiny, or providence, that the 5 will die, and so saying No is moral. Yet most people in western countries waver.

What if you were told that the very same event - one man was pushed by another to save a group - happened 6 months ago. Did that man act ethically? One a scale of 1 - 5 (where 1 = despicable and repugnant, and 5 = even Mother Teresa would've pushed him) how would you rate that man's actions?

What if you had special foresight and you knew that in exactly 6 months one man would be pushed to save the lives of 5 others. Nothing could be done in the intervening period to change this fact. One a scale of 1 - 5, how would you rate that man's actions?

Do those scores differ?

Findings by Caruso (2010) suggest that they might. Over a series of experiments (relating to far tamer examples) it was found that events in the past were rated as more ethical / fair than the exact same events depicted in the future. The examples they used related to economic fairness, involving the ultimatum game, as well as real-life examples such as vending machines that charge more during hot days.

They argue that emotional reactions are there to prepare an organism to react to a given situation. They argue (in part) that past events evoke less emotional response because less action need be taken. Additionally, events in the future appear to be under our influence, and so it appears as though there are more options to be taken. Additionally, once a tragedy occurs we engage in all kinds of psychological processes to rationalize it, and to integrate it into our functioning (or reject it completely).

I think it's an interesting idea, but the future and past are necessarily very complex and abstract concepts. My thoughts are if emotional responses are there for an organism to act (a very acceptable proposition, as far as I'm concerned) then the hypothesis should hold of distance as well. And so you might pose the question:

How do you feel about the following? Just last week, in (insert hometown here) A man on a bridge... pushed another... saved many lives..."

vs.

Just last week in (insert faraway-but-domestic-town) that A man on a bridge... pushed another... saved many lives..."

In both cases (past - distant vs. future - near) emotions are limited in their usefulness. You need not act (or even feel) if the event occurred on the other side of the country in a place you'd never likely go, yet you may need to act if such an event occurred three streets over, at a place you go frequently. There's obviously more to the problem, but I'd be interested to see how it turns out...

What are your thoughts on the topic? Is it ethical to push? Do you think that the weight of this example outweighs the tamer examples of Caruso (2010) and so is not applicable, and do you think my alternative would yield different results?

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Caruso, E. (2010). When the future feels worse than the past: A temporal inconsistency in moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139 (4), 610-624 DOI: 10.1037/a0020757