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      Using Virtual Reality to Assess Ethical Decisions in Road Traffic Scenarios: Applicability of Value-of-Life-Based Models and Influences of Time Pressure

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          Abstract

          Self-driving cars are posing a new challenge to our ethics. By using algorithms to make decisions in situations where harming humans is possible, probable, or even unavoidable, a self-driving car's ethical behavior comes pre-defined. Ad hoc decisions are made in milliseconds, but can be based on extensive research and debates. The same algorithms are also likely to be used in millions of cars at a time, increasing the impact of any inherent biases, and increasing the importance of getting it right. Previous research has shown that moral judgment and behavior are highly context-dependent, and comprehensive and nuanced models of the underlying cognitive processes are out of reach to date. Models of ethics for self-driving cars should thus aim to match human decisions made in the same context. We employed immersive virtual reality to assess ethical behavior in simulated road traffic scenarios, and used the collected data to train and evaluate a range of decision models. In the study, participants controlled a virtual car and had to choose which of two given obstacles they would sacrifice in order to spare the other. We randomly sampled obstacles from a variety of inanimate objects, animals and humans. Our model comparison shows that simple models based on one-dimensional value-of-life scales are suited to describe human ethical behavior in these situations. Furthermore, we examined the influence of severe time pressure on the decision-making process. We found that it decreases consistency in the decision patterns, thus providing an argument for algorithmic decision-making in road traffic. This study demonstrates the suitability of virtual reality for the assessment of ethical behavior in humans, delivering consistent results across subjects, while closely matching the experimental settings to the real world scenarios in question.

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          Most cited references30

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          When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize

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            Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment.

            Traditional theories of moral development emphasize the role of controlled cognition in mature moral judgment, while a more recent trend emphasizes intuitive and emotional processes. Here we test a dual-process theory synthesizing these perspectives. More specifically, our theory associates utilitarian moral judgment (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) with controlled cognitive processes and associates non-utilitarian moral judgment with automatic emotional responses. Consistent with this theory, we find that a cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference effect provides direct evidence for the influence of controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment, and utilitarian moral judgment more specifically.
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              The Trolley Problem

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Behav Neurosci
                Front Behav Neurosci
                Front. Behav. Neurosci.
                Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1662-5153
                05 July 2017
                2017
                : 11
                : 122
                Affiliations
                Neuroinformatics, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University Osnabrück, Germany
                Author notes

                Edited by: Nuno Sousa, Instituto de Pesquisa em Ciências da Vida e da Saúde, Portugal

                Reviewed by: Claudio Lucchiari, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy; Fuat Balci, Koç University, Turkey

                *Correspondence: Leon R. Sütfeld lsuetfel@ 123456uos.de
                Article
                10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00122
                5496958
                28174525
                b7dea0e7-1938-4eb8-8c55-904ee73e2fec
                Copyright © 2017 Sütfeld, Gast, König and Pipa.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 06 March 2017
                : 06 June 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 1, Equations: 0, References: 36, Pages: 13, Words: 10358
                Categories
                Neuroscience
                Original Research

                Neurosciences
                self-driving cars,moral judgment,ethical decisions,modeling,virtual reality,value-of-life scale,time pressure

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