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ethics
You feel less guilty when you choose inaction.
Humans assign more moral weight to active harm than passive neglect.
When faced with a tragic outcome, people judge the person who acted harshly more severely than the one who sat by and did nothing. This holds even when the inaction leads to the exact same negative result. You view the path of least resistance as inherently safer for your moral standing.
You prioritize your conscience over the actual outcome.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Ritov and Baron (1992)
- What the check found
- The claim correctly identifies a well-documented phenomenon known as omission bias, established in Ritov and Baron (1992). The provided reference text does not contain a quote, but the claim is a general principle.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.