Military Ethical Decision Making: The Effects of Option Choice and Perspective Taking on Moral Decision-Making Processes and Intentions

Abstract

We investigated the ethical decision-making processes and intentions of 151 military personnel responding to 1 of 2 ethical scenarios drawn from the deployment experiences of military commanders. For each scenario, option choice and perspective affected decision-making processes. Differences were also found between the 2 scenarios. Results add to the emerging literature concerning operational ethical conflicts and highlight the complexity and challenge that often accompanies operational ethics.

Keywords:

• military moral decision making
• option choice
• perspective taking

Notes

¹ The other moral intensity dimensions include probability of effect, the likelihood that the event actually will take place and cause the harm or benefit predicted; Proximity, the degree of perceived social, cultural, physical, or psychological nearness to the victims/beneficiaries; temporal immediacy, the length of time between the present and the anticipated onset of the moral act.; and concentration of effect, the inverse function of the number of people affected by an act of a given magnitude, specifically, that acts affecting an individual are rated as more ethically charged than those that affect many people.

² We deliberately chose to limit the number and specificity of the demographic questions asked to increase the anonymity of our participants and their responses in this sensitive area.

³ Refers to a military rotation, or the deployment of a group of military personnel in an operation, that is, “I will be on the next roto to Afghanistan.”