Psychological Bulletin, Vol 151(4), Apr 2025, 428-454; doi:10.1037/bul0000472
Humans often face moral dilemmas posing a conflict between two motives: deontology (rule-following, e.g., “thou shalt not kill”) and utilitarianism (greater-good-maximization, e.g., sacrificing one for many). A long-standing debate concerns the influence of cognitive processing on moral judgments in such dilemmas. One popular dual process account suggests that intuition favors “deontological” judgments, whereas “utilitarian” judgments require more reflection. We conducted a comprehensive multilevel, multivariate meta-analysis to assess the cumulative evidence favoring intuitive deontology, its heterogeneity within and across studies, and its robustness to bias. Following established standards, our search for published and gray literature identified 731 unique effects nested in 139 studies from 80 reports meeting our eligibility criteria. Overall, we found a significant but small effect favoring intuitive deontology (OR = 1.18, 95% CI [1.10, 1.26]; p