By Matthew Warren

Imagine that you’re an official faced with an unenviable decision: you must choose whether to establish a farm on existing land which can produce enough to feed 100 hungry families, or cut down an acre of rainforest to create a larger farm able to feed 500 hungry families. What choice would you make?

If you chose not to cut down the rainforest, you’re in the majority. In a new paper in Psychological Science, participants tended to avoid choosing to harm the rainforest, despite the benefits it would bring. This isn’t surprising: time and again, researchers have found that we will avoid causing harm if possible.

Now imagine that your choice is made harder. There’s no free land left; you have to cut down some of the rainforest. Would you cut down one acre to feed 100 families, or two acres to feed 500?

It’s an interesting question, because although researchers believe we’re generally averse to causing harm, they hadn’t really studied how we make decisions when some amount of harm is unavoidable.  And, perhaps surprisingly, in this second scenario almost 80% of people chose to do more damage, cutting down two acres of forest rather than one. In fact, across five other studies as well, Jonathan Berma from London Business School and Daniella Kupor from Boston University find that in situations where harm is unavoidable, people consistently try to maximise the social benefit, rather than minimise the amount of harm caused.

Continue reading “When Causing Harm Is Unavoidable, We Prefer To Cause More Harm For More Benefits Rather Than Less Harm For Fewer” →