Finding: When people face moral dilemmas and then see the outcomes of their choices, they change their decisions based on emotional dissatisfaction and surprise rather than fixed ethical principles, suggesting moral decision-making is more outcome-driven than value-driven.
Why it matters: This reveals how cognitive biases like outcome bias and hindsight bias shape ethical reasoning, which is crucial for understanding decision-making processes in teams, AI ethics, and designing systems that support better moral reasoning.
Method: Novel "time-travel" experimental design where participants made moral choices, saw consequences, then could revise decisions, with satisfaction and surprise measured as predictors of decision change.
Jargon: Moral identity - stable trait reflecting how central ethical values are to one's self-concept; Exp(B) - odds ratio showing how much a predictor increases/decreases likelihood of outcome.
โ ๏ธ No control group mentioned | Single study (not replicated)