Crafting the modern Prometheus: navigating morality and identity in the age of cyborg enhancements

ABSTRACT

Across three vignette-based experiments (N = 697) primarily involving young adults from China, our research systematically examines the moral judgments and perceived identity changes associated with technological implants, unveiling “naturalness bias” as a pivotal psychological mechanism influencing these judgments. Study 1 scrutinized the effects of physical enhancements via body implants, revealing a significant link between perceived low naturalness, negative moral judgment, and a reduced intention to adopt such technologies. Moreover, individuals who receive technological implants were perceived as more inclined toward immoral behavior, resulting in a considerable shift in identity perception. Study 2 confirmed these findings and introduced a control group of plastic surgery vignette to refine comparisons and enhance methodological rigor. Study 3 broadened the scope to include both emotional and cognitive enhancements via implants. It found that emotional enhancements were judged more critically regarding morality and naturalness, leading to greater perceived identity changes and higher expectations of immoral behavior compared to cognitive enhancements. Collectively, the current research provides essential insights into the ethical dimensions of transhumanist technologies, highlighting the profound moral considerations and identity implications of adopting such enhancements.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyborg
• transhumanism
• moral judgment
• naturalness bias
• personal identity

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback, which greatly contributed to the improvement of the manuscript. We also would like to thank Dr. Shenlong Yang and Dr. Xinni Wei for their generous help with data collection (Studies 2 & 3).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contribution

Haotian Zhang and Zheli Xuan contributed equally to conceptualization, methodology, data collection, formal analysis, writing-original draft, review, and editing. Feng Yu and Xiaojun Ding contributed to conceptualization, methodology, supervision, writing – review and editing. Yufang Han contributed to conceptualization, methodology, writing-review and editing.

Ethics statement

All procedures used in the current study were approved by the Ethics Committee at Wuhan University.

Transparency statement

All the original data are available to the public at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/mra4k/?view_only=ecbc7c692d2e42bc83445b005fa33fdf.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the State Scholarship Fund organized by the China Scholarship Council [202306270162]; Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education [19YJC720006]; National Social Science Fund of China [20CZX059; 20FZXB047].