TECH

'Train Puzzle' will make you question the rationality of your decisions

The situation is complicated: a train advances without brakes and is about to run over five people who are on the railroad. You are at the side of the road, in front of a lever that, if pulled, can divert the path of the composition. However, if you trigger the equipment, the train will run over another person on the next line.You have ten seconds to make a decision. If you do nothing, five people die. If you pull the lever, they will be saved, but as a consequence, another person will die. What to do?This experiment, known as the train dilemma, is a classic scenario between philosophers and sociologists - it is used to study how we make decisions and to confront different perspectives on the same situation.

Ethical conflict
On the one hand, there are those who believe that the correct thing would be to do the least possible damage, that is, the best option would be to pull the lever to save more lives, even if a person ends up dying.On the other side, some argue that it would be immoral to intervene in the situation, causing damage that would not occur without interference, even if the intentions are good.The spiral of questions could be endless: saving five people is better than saving only one? Is it safe to save five people, but kill one that was not at risk? If you chose not to pull the lever, would you change your mind if there were 100 people dying and not just five?

In practice

"This dilemma is about the well-being of the individual as opposed to the well-being of a group," says sociologist Dries Bostyn of the University of Ghent in Belgium.Bostyn led a team of researchers who tried to apply the hypothetical dilemma in practice. They used a different case, but it follows the same logic.For his experiment, Bostyn gathered a group of 300 volunteers who were willing to face the problem.He asked for a part of them: in a cage there are five mice and in another just one. With a 20-second countdown, if the volunteer does nothing, the five rats will suffer an electric shock that will cause pain. If before time runs out, the person pushing a button, only a mouse, which is in another cage, will take the shock.According to the sociologist, 66% of volunteers said they would push the button so that the lonely rat would receive the shock, which would prevent the group of five from suffering. Another 34% said they would not do anything and consequently the five rats would receive the discharge.

Then the researchers put another group of volunteers in the face of the real situation. The result was divergent. They stood in front of the cage with five rodents and the other with only one.
Between the boxes, there was the button to apply the shock (in fact, it did not actually produce electric shock, but the participants were led to believe that it was). The chronometer was starting to move, and people had to decide what to do, quickly.
In this case, 84% of the volunteers pressed the button to save the five rats. Only 16% did nothing to avoid the possible effect - a different result than when the test is applied only in theory.

Change
For Bostyn, this result suggests that "what people think does not match what they do in practice."
One of the most interesting results of the test, according to the researchers, was the contradictory feeling experienced by the participants.
"It was fascinating to see people who thought they had made a good decision and then apologized for their choice," says Bostyn. "It's a very interesting question to study in the future."
The Bostyn experiment still has several limitations, as it is difficult to compare the death of a mouse with that of a human being.
In the future, the researcher intends to do a test in which the same person responds to the hypothetical case and then is subjected to real experience.

Back to the train, did you change your mind?

Source: bbc.com