Enigman said:
You are a hospital administrator, press the button and a five-year-old gets a million dollar worth liver, if you don't and you can spend it spending the million dollars to buy other hospital equipment or pay physician salaries.
Since there don't seem to be any takers, I will bring attention to some rather thought provoking work done in this field by Philip Tetlock:
Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions
The above dilemma happens to be a simplified version of a dilemma from his work, the study was about Sacred Value Protection Model (SVPM) and its moral cleansing hypothesis:
A total of 228 participants were presented with a health-care decision-making questionnaire that contained one o f eight versions of the following scenario , generated by a 2 (taboo-tragic trade-off ) X 2 (length of deliberations ) X 2 (saving or not saving "Johnny" ) factorial . Robert , the key decision maker , was described as the Director of Health Care Management.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/je...sychology_of_the_unthinkable.pdf?m=1450896650
The tragic trade-off was between Johnny a five year old and another six year old boy, only one of who could get the liver they needed to live.
The taboo trade-off was between the liver transplant surgery to save Johnny that would cost the hospital $1M or to spend the $1M on other hospital needs.
A second independent variable that was added was with what ease was the ease that decision was made.
The decisions were rated, and the reward/punishment of the decision maker Robert was graded on a scale of 1 to 7
The results of the taboo situation were:
Most favourable decision was that to spend the money on the transplant with the decision made easily and quickly
Most unfavourable decision was to spend the money on hospital needs after a long and hard deliberation on the choices. Which is interesting because it reveals an interesting bias, you will be judged by the society more harshly if you choose a secular value over a sacred value
after a longer deliberation rather than a quicker one. Even though spending the $1M on infrastructure would save more lives on the long run, we tend to give preference to a sacred value and consider it superior to a secular one by default without due consideration. The taboo tradeoff in which the administrator chose the hospital over Johnny generated the maximum outrage. The participants seem to think that
"anyone who thinks that long about the dollar value of a child's life is morally suspect."
This is further developed in the tragic trade-off where one named-patient Johnny (5-year-old) was compared with an unnamed patient (6-year-old)
The Roger that took
more time with his decision regardless of his choice was regarded more favourably this time.
