Religiosity Both Increases and Decreases Deontological and Utilitarian Dilemma Response Inclinations

Religious people tend to reject causing harm on classic moral dilemmas where harm maximizes overall outcomes (consistent with deontology; inconsistent with utilitarianism), but the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. We propose that this lack of clarity stems in part from a common method issue in classic moral dilemma research. Namely, although most theorizing about dilemmas assumes that inclinations to avoid harm are independent of inclinations to maximize outcomes, typical dilemma analyses pit these two considerations against each other, making them necessarily inverted. Therefore, previous research on religiosity and moral dilemma judgments cannot ascertain whether religious people are particularly inclined to avoid harm, disinclined to maximize outcomes, or evince a more complex pattern of inclinations. To avoid this methodological issue, in the current work, we used process dissociation to independently quantify outcome-maximizing (utilitarian) and harm-avoidance (deontological) response inclinations underpinning classic relative dilemma judgments and tested several possible mediators between religiosity and these response inclinations. In three studies (N = 1,042), we replicated the common finding that religiosity predicted rejection of harm in classic dilemmas. However, process dissociation revealed that religiosity predicted both increased harm-avoidance and decreased outcome-maximization. Moreover, across multiple studies, religiosity predicted endorsement of divine command beliefs, which mediated reduced utilitarian inclinations. Religiosity also predicted empathic concern, which mediated increased deontological inclinations. Additionally, religiosity predicted moral absolutism, which mediated increases on both inclinations, as well as fatalism, which mediated decreases in both inclinations. These parallel findings canceled out for relative judgments. Study 3 clarified that most of these findings are specific to intrinsic religiosity; extrinsic religiosity shows a somewhat different pattern of results. Together, these findings suggest that religious people are not as ‘purely deontological’ as previously thought—rather, religiosity influences moral judgments through a complex web of cognitive and affective constructs that both increase tendencies to avoid harm regardless of the outcomes and decrease concerns for maximizing situational outcomes.