Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224

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Cognition
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT

Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms

Linda Abarbanell a,*,1, Marc D. Hauser b,c,1
a
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
b
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
c
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Anthropologists have provided rich field descriptions of the norms and conventions gov-
Received 26 June 2008 erning behavior and interactions in small-scale societies. Here, we add a further dimension
Revised 11 December 2009 to this work by presenting hypothetical moral dilemmas involving harm, to a small-scale,
Accepted 16 December 2009
agrarian Mayan population, with the specific goal of exploring the hypothesis that certain
moral principles apply universally. We presented Mayan participants with moral dilemmas
translated into their native language, Tseltal. Paralleling several studies carried out with
Keywords:
educated subjects living in large-scale, developed nations, the Mayan participants judged
Moral psychology
Cross-cultural
harms caused as the means to a greater good as more forbidden than harms caused as a
Omission bias side-effect (i.e., side-effect bias). However, unlike these other populations living in large-
Means-side-effects scale societies, as well as a more educated and less rural Mayan comparison group, the tar-
Universals get rural Mayan participants did not judge actions causing harm as worse than omissions
Mayans (i.e., omission bias). A series of probes targeting the action–omission distinction suggest
Judgments that the absence of an omission bias among the rural Mayan participants was not due to
difficulties comprehending the dilemmas, using the judgment scale, or in attributing a
greater causal role for actions over omissions. Thus, while the moral distinction between
means and side-effect may be more universal, the moral distinction between actions and
omission appears to be open to greater cross-cultural variation. We discuss these results
in light of issues concerning the role of biological constraints and cultural variation in
moral decision-making, as well as the limitations of such experimental, cross-cultural
research.
Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction moral relativist might argue that the rightness or wrong-

For decades, philosophers and psychologists have wres-
tled with the distinction between moral relativism and
moral absolutism (Gowans, 2008; Harman & Thomson,
1996). Moral relativists claim that ethical standards are
culturally based and merely a matter of context and con-
vention. Moral absolutists claim that there are absolute
ethical standards, such that certain actions are either right
or wrong independently of context or culture. Whereas a
* Corresponding author. Fax: +1 617 496 7077.
E-mail addresses: abarbali@gmail.com (L.
mdh102559@gmail.com (M.D. Hauser).
1
Both authors contributed equally to this research.
ness of slavery, war, or child abuse are to be determined
by a culture, and open to change over time depending upon
culturally varying perspectives, a moral absolutist would
argue that such issues are unquestionably immoral regard-
less of the culture’s beliefs or goals. In the face of this de-
bate, it goes without saying that cultural groups, both
extinct and extant, have exhibited massive differences in
what they believe are morally permissible actions, and
how these beliefs are translated into behaviors and rules,
both explicit and implicit, that help or harm others.
(Brandt, 1954; Henrich et al., 2005; Ladd, 1957; Nisbett &
Cohen, 1996; Westermarck, 1906–1908). On the other
Abarbanell),
hand, there also appear to be similarities across cultures,
at least suggesting the possibility of universal principles

0010-0277/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.007
208 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
(Gert, 2004; Haidt, 2007; Hauser, 2006a; Henrich et al.,
2005, 2006; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996).
The philosophical debate about moral relativism and
absolutism focuses largely on prescriptive claims, that is,
whether different societies should have the kinds of free-
dom they apparently have to decide moral cases. Most of
these arguments tend to proceed without making signifi-
cant contact with descriptive work, designed to character-
ize the cross-culturally variable and universal principles
that guide moral judgment and behavior in different soci-
eties (Doris & Plakias, 2008; Fraser & Hauser, in press).
Anthropological approaches, on the other hand, have
mostly provided very general ascriptions of moral norms
to the target population, based almost entirely on observa-
tions of how people act in different circumstances, and
sometimes on the basis of questionnaires concerning
how they justify such actions (e.g., Evans-Pritchard,
1969; Malinowski, 1922/1984; Mead, 1928/2001; Turn-
bull, 1987). From the perspective of a Western industrial-
ized culture, this kind of work often leads to fairly
surprising descriptions of violence, sexuality, and parent-
ing practices, actions that we think are immoral. They have
also led to the view that moral norms are fairly uncon-
strained, free to vary depending upon the beliefs of the tar-
get culture. It is possible, however, that underlying this
variation in observed behavior are a common set of princi-
ples that dictate when harm is permissible, when help is
obligatory, and the situations that mandate loyalty and re-
spect. To address this possibility, and compliment the
more traditional observational explorations, experimental
approaches targeting specific principles are necessary (Bar-
on & Miller, 2000; Miller, 1994; Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood,
1990; Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987). Though exper-
imental approaches, by their nature, derive evidence under
more artificial conditions, they can more readily zero in on
particular parameters than standard ethnographies, and in
the present case, target factors that have been at the center
of philosophical, legal, and psychological debates (e.g.,
Gert, 2004; Hauser, 2006b; Kamm, 2007; Mikhail, 2007;
Sunstein, 2005). Further, when this experimental approach
is anchored in the rich ethnographies of the local culture,
the assumptions can be checked, and the artificiality re-
duced by contrasting the patterns obtained in experiments
with those obtained from observation. This is the approach
adopted here.
We presented moral dilemmas to a small-scale, rural,
and largely uneducated population of Mayan subjects.
We used dilemmas adapted from ones that previously
had been presented to subjects living in large-scale, highly
industrialized, and educated societies, using the Moral
Sense Test, an online experimental environment
(www.moral.wjh.edu) designed to test a broad range of
moral concerns. Previous studies with this web-based
technology, as well as other work in moral psychology,
has revealed several central psychological distinctions. In
particular, participants tend to judge harms caused as the
means to a greater good as less permissible than those
caused as side-effects (i.e., side-effect bias), actions as less
permissible than omissions (i.e., omission bias), and harms
caused by contact as less permissible than non-contact
(Baron & Ritov, 2004; Cushman, Knobe, & Sinnott-Arm-
strong, 2008; Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006; Fischer &
Ravizza, 1992; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen,
2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen,
2001; Haidt & Baron, 1996; Hauser, Tonnaer, & Cima, in
press; Mikhail, 2007; Ritov & Baron, 1990; Spranca, Minsk,
& Baron, 1991).
Though the web-based studies have tapped variation in
age, gender, education, and religious background, and re-
vealed little to no influence of such factors on participants’
moral judgments, it is clear that this internet sample is
insufficient for testing questions of universality and
cross-cultural variation. In particular, although these stud-
ies originally sampled thousands of individuals, most were
from English-speaking countries, most were formally edu-
cated, and many had read books discussing moral issues.
Further, all were technologically savvy, at least in terms
of their ability to find, log in, and navigate computer soft-
ware designed to access the world wide web. And lastly,
though many studies have uncovered the distinctions
noted above, not all do. This is especially the case with re-
spect to the action/omission distinction, where, depending
on the manipulations, some studies show an omission bias
(see references above) whereas others do not (Connolly &
Reb, 2003; Mandel & Vartanian, 2007; Patt & Zeckhauser,
2000; Tanner & Medin, 2004). At present, there is no clear
consensus as to why some studies fail to find an omission
bias in part because different studies use different presen-
tation methods (e.g., parallel vs. serial presentation of vign-
ettes), modify different aspects of the scenarios (e.g.,
familiar vs. unfamiliar individuals), use different permissi-
bility scales (e.g., dichotomous yes/no acceptability vs. per-
missibility scales), and test either a small or large number
of dilemmas varying narrowly (e.g., different versions of
the trolley problem) or broadly (e.g., artificial and non-arti-
ficial cases); for critical discussion of these issues, see (Bar-
on, 2009; Baron & Ritov, 2004). It is thus unclear, for
example, whether failures to find an omission bias are
due to particular cases (e.g., only testing trolley problems),
the use of different scales, or different modes of presenta-
tion (sequential vs. parallel).
We tested a Mayan population in the Tenejapa region of
Chiapas, Mexico, using their native language Tseltal,
attempting to match previous studies with respect to sev-
eral methodological details (Cushman, 2008a; Cushman
et al., 2006; Hauser, Cushman, Young, Jin, & Mikhail,
2007; Hauser et al., in press): moral dilemmas pitting
non-consequentialist rules against utilitarian-consequen-
tialist outcomes, sequential presentation of cases, Likert-
scales for moral judgments, scenarios lacking information
about the identity of the individuals involved. We explic-
itly contrasted the results from this population with a less
rural and more educated Mayan sample from the same
geographical region, also tested in Tseltal using the exact
same methods. Based on this design, we hypothesized that
any differences observed between the target Mayan popu-
lation and our comparison groups would be less likely to
be accounted for by methodological differences, and more
likely to be due to cultural factors; we also contrasted the
results from our target Mayan population with the internet
studies, but with the caveat that many things differ be-
tween these populations. We turn next to a brief descrip-
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224 209

tion of social life in the Tseltal Mayan community where USD), reinforcing the closed nature of these communities
we worked, presenting only those details that we consider and their need for an intra-dependent social structure.
relevant to understanding their social structure and possi- While the municipal center resembles a small town, the
bly, sense of the moral domain. outlying parajes are decidedly rural, comprised of loosely
grouped family compounds surrounded by milpas (corn-
fields). Daily life revolves around the immediate and ex-
2. Mayan2 social life: a brief synopsis
tended family, however all members of the paraje know
one another and are engaged in an extended web of mutual
The municipality of Tenejapa is an indigenous Mayan
obligations and responsibilities; all adult community
community in the highland region of Chiapas, Mexico. Of
members are obliged to share in local governance, deci-
the approximately 38,000 residents, 99% are speakers of
sion-making, and community labor. While most parajes
the Mayan language Tseltal and are descendents of the
are today accessible by road, transportation is still scarce.
classical Mayan civilization that flourished from 600 to
Most individuals rarely leave their paraje.
900 AD. Although the culture has changed alongside and
The physical and familial structure of these parajes
in interaction with mainstream Mexican society, a long
helps to strengthen community bonds. Inheritance is patri-
history of apartheid together with the remarkable resis-
lineal, with a father’s land divided evenly among all of his
tance of the indigenous peoples has resulted in the mainte-
sons who will often build their homes on this land, forming
nance of a separate culture, with its own language, dress,
extended family complexes. Daughters generally leave the
and social, political and religious institutions, making this
family compound to live with their husbands; however,
a relevant population for exploring cross-cultural similari-
they may make frequent visits home and remain closely
ties and differences in the moral domain.
tied to their family of origin. As most families are fairly
The municipality is divided into 61 parajes, small rural
large (an average of 3 live births per woman 12 years and
hamlets that surround a more urban municipal center
older; INEGI, 2005), and individuals tend to marry young
and that maintain the structure of a small-scale agrarian
(as young as 15 years old), this quickly results in an ex-
society in daily life (INEGI, 2005). The center houses gov-
tended network of kin with the associated responsibilities
ernment offices, the main Catholic church, and a weekly
and obligations. All family members including young chil-
market, and is the primary site of political and ceremonial
dren share responsibilities for household chores such as
life. It is also home to a small but prominent ladino popu-
tending crops, gathering firewood, cooking and childcare.
lation (Spanish-speakers of mixed Spanish and indigenous
These close-knit networks of community and kin provide
descent), most of whose families have resided in Tenejapa
an important contrast from prior samples of industrialized
for generations and own small shops and businesses that
large-scale societies that could potentially affect moral
line the center’s three main streets. There is also regular
judgments, particularly with respect to perceived obliga-
transportation between the municipal center and the near-
tions and responsibilities toward others, and resulting in
est urban center of San Cristobal de Las Casas at a distance
a relatively rich understanding of what others do and do
of about 27 km. In contrast, the outlying parajes, which are
not do.
relatively isolated, are inhabited almost exclusively by
In addition to these characteristics which help bind
Tseltal Mayans who practice subsistence milpa (slash and
community members to one another, the political system
burn) agriculture. Despite the long-time coexistence of
in Tenejapa has a unique structure that helps reinforce
the ladino and the indigenous populations, contact be-
the traditional beliefs and practices of the community.
tween them is limited. Each group worships its own set
The Ayuntamiento, or city council, the central political
of saints and maintains its own religious festivals. And
power in the municipality, is comprised of two groups of
while indigenous and ladino children attend the same
functionaries – those who are part of the official institution
schools, most ladinos speak little to no Tseltal, and the
as recognized by Mexican law, and those who are not rec-
two groups rarely if ever intermarry.
ognized by law but by the social and cultural norms of the
While recent government incentives have resulted in
community (Medina Hernandez, 1991). The first group
most children now attending school, most adults
consists of a municipal president, a syndicate, nine regi-
(>35 years old) in Tenejapa have little to no formal school-
dores who function like local police, a judge, a treasurer,
ing and few opportunities to participate in the national
a secretary, and various directorates. The second group
economy, resulting in limited to no contact with the
consists of four alkal (from the Spanish, mayor), eight tatik
majority culture. Men may occasionally travel to lowland
martin (from San Sebastian martyr), and a larger group of
fincas or tourist centers like Cancun for seasonal employ-
minor regidores who serve largely as messengers and er-
ment, and a small number migrate to urban areas like Mex-
rand runners for higher political authorities.
ico City and even the United States and send earnings
The alkal together with the tatik martin have an espe-
home. About half the population earns no wages at all,
cially unique and important role: they serve to connect
while the other half earns less than the minimum wage
the official government with the traditional religious orga-
(at the time of testing, 48 pesos per day, or about $4.50
nization and social norms of the community (Medina Her-
nandez, 1991). The alkal select the head alfereces, or
2
For convenience, we use the term ‘‘Mayan” throughout this paper when captains who are in charge of carrying out traditional reli-
referring to the Tseltal Mayan community of Tenejapa where we worked.
We wish to emphasize, however, that there are various Mayan languages
gious festivals believed to be necessary for the well-being
and cultures and our findings may or may not generalize to other Mayan of the community. They also make sure that the alfereces
communities. carry out their duties in line with the socially sanctioned
210 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
rules, which include prohibitions such as fasting and absti-
nence from any sexual relations during certain festivals.
Failure to observe such restrictions are believed to result
in the failure of the festival and perhaps even the death
of the transgressor, reinforcing a connection between indi-
vidual obligations and the well-being of the entire commu-
nity. The tatik martin have the special duty of instructing
the members of the Ayuntamiento in a series of prayers
that are recited by all political functionaries at the begin-
ning and middle of the year. They also have the responsi-
bility of interceding if they feel the municipal authorities
have strayed from traditional Tenejapan norms.
In addition to these two main groups localized in the
municipal center – one sanctioned by the law and the
other by the community – there is a third group, the tijwi-
nik, who serve to connect the Ayuntamiento with the out-
lying parajes. While localized in their parajes where they
help maintain order, they meet weekly with the municipal
president where they serve as a representative and mes-
senger for their community.
The Mayan communities, therefore, while accountable
to Mexican national law, remain distinctly rooted in local
social and religious customs and tied to the needs and
norms of hamlet life. Such ties include both a heightened
responsibility to both family and community, as well an
intimacy with the actions and relationships of others in
their community.
3. Methods
3.1. Sample sites
Most of our participants were from the parajes of the
Cañada Chica (pop. 217), the Cañada Grande (pop. 550),
and for one condition, from Pajaltón (pop. 613; INEGI,
2005). All three parajes lie outside of the municipal center.
While not randomly selected (these communities were se-
lected on the basis of prior fieldwork and relationships that
facilitated testing), they have demographic profiles that
place them close to the municipal average on many mea-
sures of conservatism, such as illiteracy (Proportion of illit-
erate individuals 15 years and older: Cañana Chica
(CC) = 42%, Cañada Grande (CG) = 36%, Pajalton (P) = 29%,
municipal average 31%), monolingualism (% monolingual
5 years and older: CC = 46%, CG = 39%, P = 33%, municipal
average 31%), and level of schooling (average grade level:
CC = 4.3, CG = 4.4, P = 3.8, municipal average 4.3; INEGI,
2005). Moreover, these parajes adhere to the social, physi-
cal, and political description outlined in the previous
section.
3.2. Participant recruitment
We recruited participants in the Cañanda Chica and the
Cañada Grande with the help of LA’s research assistant, a
native-speaking Tseltal woman who was from the commu-
nity and resided in the same paraje (the Cañada Chica) as
many of the participants. The research assistant walked
from house to house, first explaining the general condi-
tions of the study, and then asking whether anyone in
the household would like to participate. At the time of test-
ing, LA had worked in this community for over 4 years, and
with this particular research assistant for 2 years. There-
fore, both LA and her assistant were well known to most
community members who readily participated in previous
tasks; none of this earlier work focused on issues of moral-
ity, or social norms more generally. In Pajaltón, recruit-
ment was facilitated by the local authorities. An effort
was made to recruit participants who had little to no
schooling and had not lived or worked outside of Tenejapa
as our intention was to obtain a sample as distinct from
prior samples and as representative of a small-scale agrar-
ian society as possible. Because of social conventions, as
well as a limited adult population to select from, we did
not have strict control over individual-level demographics.
Our final sample of participants therefore tended to mirror
the average adult demographics of the parajes where we
worked.
Due to the above mentioned limitations, and in particu-
lar, restrictions on the total available sample of partici-
pants that could be tested, some participants were tested
on more than one condition. These individuals were later
identified using a highly conservative approach. Specifi-
cally, given that many individuals in this community share
the same first name, as well as their maternal and paternal
last names, we compared all individuals with the exact
same name and classified them as repeats if they provided
overlapping demographic information, allowing for ex-
pected variation in the self-report of factors such as age.
For example, as in many small-scale societies, many indi-
viduals have only a rough sense of their age, and thus,
when asked, will often give estimates that can fluctuate
by as much as 10 years for the same individual on different
occasions. For example, we counted as the same individual
three entries sharing the same name and demographic
information (including places of residence and birth, years
of schooling, number of children and religious identifica-
tion), but with reported ages of 30, 37 and 38 years. In
our analyses, we test for the effect of repeated sampling
on moral judgments, noting that in previous work we have
not found any such effects (Cushman et al., 2006; Hauser
et al., in press; Huebner, Pettit, & Hauser, in preparation).
Participants were paid 40 pesos (about 4 USD) for their
time, a rate that had previously been agreed upon in meet-
ings between LA, the local authorities and a gathering of
interested community members. Procedures for oral in-
formed consent were followed at all times, and all studies
were conducted with the consent of local authorities, as
well as with the approval of Harvard University’s IRB. Test-
ing took place in a quiet room of a private dwelling in Ten-
ejapa for participants from the Cañanda Chica and the
Cañada Grande and in an unused classroom of the local
school in Pajaltón, with only LA, the research assistant,
and participant present. Most sessions lasted about 20 min.
3.3. Translation of moral dilemmas
English-language versions of the dilemmas were trans-
lated into Spanish by LA who is fluent in Spanish. These
were then translated into Tseltal with the assistance of a
native Tseltal-speaker (a former bilingual school teacher
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
and Tseltal instructor). LA, who is proficient in Tseltal, first
explained each dilemma in Spanish and then helped trans-
late it line-by-line alongside the translator. This collabora-
tive method allowed LA to question specific words and
phrases, to check for fidelity to the original version, and
to clarify any misunderstandings. The translated dilemmas
were then back-translated into Spanish by the research
assistant in Tenejapa who would be assisting with the task.
This was again done on a line-by-line basis followed by
asking for a brief summary to check for overall comprehen-
sion. The assistant, a woman from the community with a
background similar to the participants, was also asked
whether she thought the stories would be comprehensible
to the participants. Occasionally, lexical changes were
made to reflect local variations and artifacts were rendered
more culturally appropriate (e.g. a vase was replaced with
a ceramic water vessel or k’ib). However, every effort was
made to match the original structure of the dilemmas as
closely as possible (see Appendix A for back-translation
of Tseltal into English).
In collaboration with the research assistant, LA devised
a 5-point scale in Tseltal to mirror the 7-point forbidden–
permissible–obligatory scale used in the internet based
studies (Cushman et al., 2006; Hauser et al., in press). First,
a dichotomy was drawn between actions that ‘‘won’t do”,
were ‘‘not possible” or ‘‘don’t answer”, ma xtu’un in Tseltal,
and actions that were favorable or good, lek. Checking
these terms against the opinions of several native speakers,
they were found to be the closest in match in both defini-
tions and use (for an analysis of the corresponding terms in
Tsotsil, a closely related language, see Haviland, 1977, p.
123). Intensifiers were then added to make a 5-point scale
ranging from very impermissible to very good: ma xtu’un ta
bayel (very impermissible), ma xtu’un jteb nax (a little
impermissible), lek jteb (a little good), lek nax (regular
good), and mero lek (very good).
3.4. Testing procedures
After a brief background interview (including questions
about the participants’ age, marital status and number of
children, places of residence and birth, work and school
history, knowledge of Spanish and literacy, and religious
affiliation), participants were told that they would be read
two to four stories and after each, would be asked what
they thought about the protagonist’s behavior in the story,
using the scale to provide their response. Participants were
assured that there were no right or wrong answers and
that we were only interested in what they thought. The
stories were then read by LA to ensure that they were read
in the same manner for each participant and for each story;
however, the research assistant was present at all times to
offer clarifications and support as needed, with LA moni-
toring for accuracy and bias. For example, if the research
assistant said ‘‘he called the man over and the one man
died,” LA added ‘‘thus, the five men were saved.” The re-
search assistant was familiar with the need for experimen-
tal control and had excellent communication skills and
rapport with the participants.
Following the presentation of each story, we asked par-
ticipants ‘‘What do you think about that, what the man
211
did?” (Binti ya a’nop yu’un a te 0ye, jich te bit’il la spas te wi-
nike?). To ensure that the participants (most of whom were
nonliterate and unfamiliar with this type of task) under-
stood what they were supposed to be responding to, the
question was followed by a quick, neutral summary (e.g.
‘‘that he called the man over, thus the one man died and
the five men were saved”). Participants were then told about
the judgment scale. To concretize the scale, LA held up one
hand and pointed to each finger in turn while reading the
scale. If participants had difficulty responding, they were gi-
ven a choice between ma xtu’un or lek, followed by addi-
tional prompting with the intensifiers. Most participants,
however, responded appropriately without simplification.
4. Condition 1
4.1. Methods
To determine whether the general methods used in pre-
vious studies of moral judgments among participants liv-
ing in large-scale societies would work with our Mayan
population, we presented 30 adult participants (Fe-
male = 23, Male = 7, mean age = 42.10 (SD = 13.18, range
24–70), mean years of schooling = 2.33 (SD = 2.50, range
0–6)) with four moral dilemmas, each involving a potential
harm to one individual and the saving of five other individ-
uals. The dilemmas targeted killing by way of non-contact
means, a side-effect, an omission (letting die), and contact
(see Table 1). More specifically, we sought an initial test of
the hypothesis that, like participants on the Moral Sense
Test, the Mayan participants would perceive (1) means-
based harms as worse than side-effects, (2) actions as
worse than omissions, and (3) contact-based harms as
worse than non-contact (Cushman et al., 2006).
The Mayan participants were read each story, one at a
time, randomized for order of presentation. A repeated
measures ANOVA was computed over the participants’ re-
sponses to the 5-point Likert-scale.
4.2. Results
Overall, there was a significant difference in permissi-
bility judgments for these four dilemmas (F3,87 = 39.61,
p < 0.001, g2p ¼ 0:58). Paired t-tests showed that subjects
judged harms caused as a side-effect as more permissible
(MSIDE-EFFECT = 4.07, SE = 0.22) than means-based harms
caused by contact (MMEANS-CONTACT = 1.63, SE = 0.22;
t(29) = 8.06, p < 0.001, d = 2.02) and non-contact (MMEANS-
NON-CONTACT = 1.90, SE = 0.21; t(29) = 7.86, p < 0.001,
d = 1.84), as well as by omission (MOMIT = 1.90, SE = 0.26;
t(29) = 6.39; p < 0.001, d = 1.66). Critically, when harm
was caused in the absence of contact, subjects did not
judge harms caused by action as worse than harms caused
by omission or letting die, nor did they judge contactful
harm as worse than harm caused in the absence of contact.
4.3. Discussion
These results license two preliminary conclusions con-
cerning the specific dilemmas presented and the specific
212 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224

Table 1
The first four dilemmas presented to Mayan subjects, testing for the distinctions of (i) means-side-effect, (ii) kill-let die, and (iii) contact-no contact. All
dilemmas started as follows: A man is sitting near the side of the road when he sees a truck speeding along. It is headed towards a group of five men, who do not hear
or see it, and if nothing appears in the road, it will certainly hit and kill them. . .

Side-effect, non-contact killing
Across the road is another man
sitting in front of his house. If the
man who is sitting by the road calls
out to the truck driver and says
‘watch out,’ the truck will swerve
away from the five men, saving
them, but into the path of the one
man in front of his house, killing
him. If the man sitting by the road
says nothing the truck will travel
on and kill the five, and the one
man in front of his house will be
safe. The man decides to call out, so
the one man is killed and the five
men are saved
Means-based non-contact killing
Across the road is another man
sitting in front of his house. If the
man who is sitting by the road calls
out to the man by his house and
says ‘come here,’ the man will walk
into the road in the path of the
truck, be killed, and stop it from
continuing on toward the five,
saving them. If the man sitting by
the road says nothing, the truck
will travel on and kill the five. The
man decides to call out so the one
man is killed and the five men are
saved
Non-contact omission, letting die
Across the road is another man
about to walk onto the road. If he
walks onto the road, the truck will
certainly hit and kill him, but if it
does, it will stop and not continue
and the other five will not be hurt.
If the man who is sitting by the
road calls out to the man about to
cross the road and says ‘look out!,’
the man will not walk into the road
in the path of the truck, and will be
safe. But the truck will continue on
toward the five, killing them. If the
man sitting by the road says
nothing, the truck will travel on
and kill the man crossing the road.
The man decides not to call out, so
the one man is killed and the five
men are saved
Means-based contact killing
Standing next to him is another
man. If the man who is sitting by
the road pushes the other man, the
other man will fall into the path of
the truck, be killed, and stop it
from continuing on toward the
five, saving them. If the man sitting
by the road does nothing, the truck
will travel on and kill the five. The
man decides to push the other
man, so the one other man is killed
and the five men are saved

Mayan population tested. First, based on the fact that par-
ticipants showed a significant difference in their judg-
ments between harms caused as a side-effect and the
three other distinctions, it appears that our methods are
sufficiently sensitive to detect at least this difference. That
is, the translations appeared to preserve some of the essen-
tial differences between cases, and participants were able
to understand and use the scale. Second, participants did
not, on average, display a significant distinction in their
moral judgments between killing and letting die (i.e., ac-
tion and omission), or between contact and non-contact
harm. The absence of a significant difference in judgments
of moral severity between killing and letting die is partic-
ularly striking given that a significant number of published
papers testing this distinction report an omission bias (Bar-
on, 2009; Baron & Ritov, 2004; Cushman et al., 2006, 2008;
Haidt & Baron, 1996; Hauser et al., in press; Ritov & Baron,
1990; Spranca et al., 1991), including studies using the
same general methods (e.g., sequential presentation of sce-
narios, judgments on a Likert-scale). Moreover, Cushman
et al. (2006) found that most participants judging such
cases, when asked to justify their responses, had based
their decision on consciously available information; in con-
trast, only half of the participants recovered an explicit jus-
tification for the contact vs. non-contact distinction, and
once recovered, typically rejected the distinction as mor-
ally relevant.
There are two possible interpretations for the absence
of a significant difference in the judgments of this particu-
lar Mayan population for a pair of dilemmas focusing on
the distinction between killing and letting die: either they
do not perceive a morally significant difference between
actions and omissions, or there was something unusual
about the particular set of dilemmas presented, including
potential differences in the translation, as well as the rela-
tive salience of certain factors, such as the intentions of the
protagonist and his knowledge of impending harm. To ad-
dress these potential factors, we presented a new popula-
tion of 30 adult participants from the same community
with two new pairs of dilemmas, specifically targeting
the action–omission distinction, using the same general
methods as in Condition 1.
5. Condition 2
5.1. Methods
We tested a population of 30 adult participants (M = 12,
F = 18, mean age = 42.3 years (SD = 9.54, range 23–62),
mean years of schooling = 1.83 (SD = 2.21, range 0–6)) with
no prior experience using scales and reading moral dilem-
mas. All methods of testing were the same as in Condition
1, except where otherwise noted.
We presented each subject with four moral dilemmas,
specifically, two pairs of action–omission cases with the
order of presentation randomized across participants (see
Appendix A). One pair of cases involved a man in his boat
who could save five drowning swimmers, but either ac-
tively kills one in the process or fails to save one; here,
there is no intent on the part of the man in the boat to kill
(by means or side-effect) the one, a difference that may be
important when contrasted with the dilemmas in Condi-
tion 1, and with the second pair of dilemmas used in this
condition. The second pair involved a boulder rolling
downhill toward five people. If the boulder continues
down its path, unobstructed, it will kill all five people un-
less a nearby farmer either actively calls out to another
person to move in front of the boulder (unaware of its
presence) or fails to warn the other person who is about
to walk in the way of the boulder’s path. In both cases,
the scenarios make clear that the main protagonist (the
farmer) either intends to call out and cause a person to
walk into the path of danger or intends to remain quiet
(when it would be of no cost to call out), thereby allowing
a person to walk into the path of danger.
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
5.2. Results
For the boat cases, paired t-tests showed that there was
no statistically significant difference between action
(MACT = 4.03, SE = 0.18) and omission (MOMIT = 4.10,
SE = 0.16; t(29) = 0.35, p = 0.73, d = 0.08). Similarly, for the
boulder cases, there was no statistically significant differ-
ence between action (MACT = 3.30, SE = 0.23) and omission
(MOMIT = 3.60, SE = 0.26; t(29) = 0.96, p = 0.34, d = 0.22).
5.3. Discussion
Replicating the pattern obtained in Condition 1, we
again find that this Mayan population does not show a sig-
nificant difference in their moral judgments between ac-
tion and omission in the context of harm. Combining the
results from Conditions 1 and 2, we find that for three dif-
ferent dilemmas targeting the distinction between actions
and omissions, this Mayan population shows no evidence
of an omission bias. This consistency reduces the possibil-
ity that participants simply did not understand these par-
ticular dilemmas but understood the means-side-effect
case. Further, given that participants generated different
overall permissibility scores for the different dilemmas
(ranging from a mean of 1.90–4.10), they are at least able
to use different parts of the scale. The absence of a statisti-
cally significant difference across three dilemma pairs is
therefore consistent with the conclusion that this particu-
lar Mayan population does not perceive a moral difference
between actions and omissions.
6. Condition 3
The goal of Condition 3 was to further test the robust-
ness of the means-side-effect distinction, and to test an
additional set of action–omission cases, with one simpli-
fied pair previously presented to young (4–6 year old)
children who judged the action as worse than the omission
(Cushman, Young, & Hauser, in preparation; Knafo &
Hauser, in preparation), and a second pair, designed for
adults, that had previously yielded a highly robust differ-
ence between action and omission judgments on the Moral
Sense Test. More generally, the goal of this condition was
to assess, by presenting new scenarios, whether this
Mayan population is sensitive to some distinctions irre-
spective of context (e.g., means vs. side-effects), but not
others (e.g., actions vs. omissions).
6.1. Methods
We ran Condition 3 using the same methods as for Con-
ditions 1 and 2 with the following exceptions. First, we
presented 31 adults (M = 12, F = 19, mean age = 49.10 -
years (SD = 14.85, range 31–80), mean years of school-
ing = 2.87 (SD = 3.65, range 0–9)) with the two new pairs
of dilemmas targeting the action–omission distinction
(see Appendix A); three of our subjects had participated
in one prior condition approximately 9 months prior. One
dilemma pair (‘‘Vase”, see Appendix A) was, as noted, spe-
cifically designed for 4–6 year old English speaking chil-
213
dren (Cushman et al., in preparation), and as such,
consisted of shorter sentences and child-appropriate
vocabulary. In a preliminary test of English-speaking, Is-
raeli born children, a significant number (29 out of 46)
judged the actor in the Vase dilemma as ‘‘more bad” than
the omitter (binomial: p = 0.025; Knafo & Hauser, in prep-
aration). While the children viewed power-point slides
accompanying the dilemmas and were asked to directly
compare the actor vs. the omitter rather than using a judg-
ment scale, these results at least demonstrate that the con-
tent of the stories was not only understandable to these
young children, but also, sufficient to trigger an omission
bias. Thus, if the absence of a perceived moral difference
between actions and omissions was due to the complexity
of the dilemmas, then this simpler case should make the
distinction more transparent, and hopefully, more mean-
ingful with respect to the moral difference between actions
and omissions.
The second pair of cases (‘‘Pond”, see Appendix A) had
yielded a very robust omission bias among an adult, inter-
net sample (Cohen’s d = 0.84). As the cases were all either
action or omission, we used a pseudo-randomized design
to allow for the greatest mix, with consecutive dilemmas
alternating between the two cases (i.e., Vase–Pond–Vase–
Pond or Pond–Vase–Pond–Vase) and staggered for action
and omission (i.e., omit–act–act–omit or act–omit–omit–
act). If the absence of a moral distinction between actions
and omissions is due to culture-specific factors, then nei-
ther the simplicity nor the robustness of the cases when
presented to a more industrialized population will have
an effect on our Mayan participants.
Second, to test whether the means-side-effect distinc-
tion was robust, we presented another pair of moral dilem-
mas to 30 adults (M = 8, F = 22; mean age = 46.00 years
(SD = 15.67, range 22–83); mean years of schooling = 2.23
(SD = 2.75, range 0–9)), 13 of whom had participated in
one prior condition (between approximately 5 and
15 months prior). This pair of dilemmas (‘‘Peccaries”, see
Appendix A) captured the distinction between harm
caused as a means to a greater good and harm caused as
a side-effect, but differed in content from the dilemmas
presented in Condition 1. Specifically, a woman is carrying
a baby while picking fruit atop a tree when she sees a herd
of peccaries stampeding towards her five other babies be-
low. To save the five babies, she can either throw the baby
she is carrying down to scare the peccaries away, thus kill-
ing the one baby but saving the five (means), or she can
rush down herself, dropping the baby she is carrying as a
result (side-effect). The order of the dilemmas was coun-
terbalanced across participants.
6.2. Results
For the two pairs of action–omission dilemmas, paired
t-tests showed that there was no difference in judgments
for either the vase case (MACT = 1.87, SE = 0.20 vs. MO-
MIT = 1.94, SE = 0.20; t(30) = 0.28, p = 0.78, d = 0.06) or for
the pond case (MACT = 2.87, SE = 0.28 vs. MOMIT = 3.06,
SE = 0.26; t(30) = 0.66, p = 0.52, d = 0.13).
For the pair of means-side-effect dilemmas, we ran a re-
peated measures ANOVA with prior participation and di-
214 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
lemma order as between-subjects factors and the means-
side-effect contrast as a within-subjects factor. As in Con-
dition 1, participants, on average, judged the means-based
harm as more forbidden (MMEANS = 2.67, SE = 0.27) than the
side-effect (MSIDE-EFFECT = 3.44, SE = 0.30; F(1, 26) = 10.79,
p = 0.003, g2p ¼ 0:29). There were no main effects or inter-
actions for the order of the dilemmas or for prior participa-
tion (p’s > 0.16).
6.3. Discussion
Condition 3 provides further evidence that this Mayan
population does not perceive a moral difference between
actions and omissions, while perceiving a difference be-
tween means and side-effects. The absence of an omission
bias here is even less likely than in the previous cases to be
due to the complexity of the dilemmas: even when pre-
sented with a dilemma that among children triggered an
omission bias, no difference emerged among our adult Ma-
yan sample; we draw this conclusion somewhat conserva-
tively, however, given that the children were aided by
illustrations, a methodological difference that could facili-
tate the perception of a moral difference.
Adding the results of Condition 3 to those obtained in
Conditions 1 and 2, we find that this Mayan population
generates similar moral judgments for actions and omis-
sions, across five different moral dilemmas, while generat-
ing different judgments for means-based harms as
opposed to side-effects for two different dilemmas. The
remaining two conditions explore an initial explanation
for why this Mayan population might not exhibit an omis-
sion bias, and the factors that might contribute to express-
ing such a bias.
7. Condition 4
Both philosophical work (Bennett, 1995; Hart & Honore,
1959) as well as recent empirical investigations (Alicke,
2000; Cushman et al., in preparation; Haidt & Baron,
1996; Spranca et al., 1991) suggest that the perceived dif-
ference between actions and omissions may derive from
differences in our attribution of causal responsibility to
agents. In particular, agents appear more causally respon-
sible for their actions than for their omissions. If, for some
reason, there are cross-cultural differences in the percep-
tion or attribution of causal responsibility, and this Mayan
population is either less sensitive to the underlying causal
factors in an event, or conversely attributes more causal
responsibility to agents for their omissions than partici-
pants from more industrialized societies, then the differ-
ence between actions and omissions might be rendered
opaque. To test this possibility, we presented two action–
omission dilemma pairs. One pair, which involved a non-
moral situation, had previously yielded a high effect size
among an internet sample, readily triggering a perceived
difference in causal responsibility (Cushman, 2008b). In
particular, among this sample, participants judged the act-
ing agent as more causally responsible for the consequence
than the omitting agent. The second pair, which involved a
moral situation, was the same ‘‘Boulder” case presented in
Condition 2. We ran the non-moral pair because of work
showing that moral attributions can affect, downstream,
causal attributions, including especially, cases involving
the doing/allowing distinction (Cushman et al., 2008).
7.1. Methods
All testing procedures were the same as Conditions 1–3,
except that in the first dilemma pair we asked participants
for their causal attributions regarding a non-moral case,
and in the second dilemma pair we presented a moral case
and asked for both their permissibility judgment (using the
same scale as in Conditions 1–3) as well as their causal
judgment. For our causal analysis, participants judged on
a 5-point scale how much of a role the protagonist played
in bringing about the consequences of the event, with
1 = none at all (e.g., ma ba swenta te Juan3), and 5 = very
much (bayel swenta te Juan).
In the non-moral dilemma (see Appendix A), a man
finds a banana tree that has fallen into a pond. The man
can either remove (act) a very buoyant branch to allow
the tree to sink and thereby eliminate bugs from the area,
or can refrain (omit) from cutting a rotten branch that is
filling with water, thereby resulting in the tree sinking.
We tested 29 adult participants (M = 7, F = 22, mean
age = 44.10 years (SD = 10.86, range 24–64), mean years
of schooling = 1.86 (SD = 2.56, range 0–9)) from the same
parajes as the previous conditions. Twelve of the partici-
pants had participated in one prior condition and one
had participated in two prior conditions (between approx-
imately 1 and 17 months prior). The order of the dilemmas
was counterbalanced across participants.
The moral dilemma was the same ‘‘boulder” scenario
used in Condition 2. To avoid retesting participants from
previous conditions, we tested 31 adults in the next near-
est paraje, Pajaltón, none of whom had participated in a
prior condition (M = 12, F = 19, mean age = 38.97 years
(SD = 13.52, range 22–72), mean years of schooling = 3.90
(SD = 2.99, range 0–12)). As described in the introduction,
Pajaltón is similar in demographic characteristics and so-
cial structure to the Cañada Chica and Cañada Grande
where the previous samples were primarily drawn. Both
dilemma order (act–omit vs. omit–act) and question order
(causal–moral vs. moral–causal) were counterbalanced
across participants.
7.2. Results
For dilemma 1, the non-moral case, a repeated measures
ANOVA with the contrast between action and omission
judgments as a within-subjects factor and dilemma order
and prior participation as between-subjects factors showed
that participants overall judged the protagonist in the action
case as more causally responsible for the banana tree sinking
(MACT = 4.18, SE = 0.18) than in the omission case (MO-
2
MIT = 2.92, SE = 0.31; F(1, 25) = 13.61, p = 0.001, gp ¼ 0:35).
3
Swenta most closely glosses as ‘with respect to’ or ‘concerning’ but,
according to our consultants, implies causality in this context. We chose
this as opposed to the more direct smul (‘fault’ or ‘sin’), since the latter
implies a negative judgment.
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
This difference, however, depended upon dilemma order
(F(1, 25) = 4.25, p = 0.05, g2p ¼ 0:15): participants who re-
ceived the action dilemma first, judged the protagonist in
the omission case as significantly less responsible
(mean = 2.33, SE = 0.41) than in the action case
(mean = 4.27, SE = 0.25; F(1, 14) = 14.83, p = .002,
g2p ¼ 0:51), while those who received the omission dilemma
first did not (omit (mean = 3.36, SE = 0.43) vs. act
(mean = 4.07, SE = 0.27); F(1, 13) = 2.66, p = 0.13,
g2p ¼ 0:17). In other words, receiving the action dilemma
first appeared to temper participants’ judgments regarding
causal responsibility in the omission case. There was no main
effect of order and no effects of prior participation (p’s > 0.15).
For the moral dilemma, the difference in the scales be-
tween the moral and causal questions prevented us from
directly comparing the two. We therefore ran separate AN-
OVAS for each question type, with the contrast between
action–omission judgments as a within-subjects factor
and dilemma order and question order as between-sub-
jects factors. For the causal judgment, participants on aver-
age judged the protagonist in the action case as more
causally responsible for the consequence (MACT = 4.65,
SE = 0.11) than in the omission case (MOMIT = 4.11,
SE = 0.21; F(1, 27) = 5.97, p = 0.02, g2p ¼ 0:18). Participants
who received the omission dilemma first tended to use a
higher end of the scale overall (mean = 4.69, SE = 0.17)
than participants who received the action dilemma first
(mean = 4.08, SE = 0.18; F(1, 27) = 5.99, p = 0.02,
g2p ¼ 0:18); however, the relative difference between ac-
tion and omission judgments did not vary by dilemma or-
der (F(1, 27) = 0.15, p = 0.70).
In contrast, participants on average perceived no differ-
ence in moral permissibility between the action
(MACT = 2.45, SE = 0.26) and omission cases (MOMIT = 2.55,
SE = 0.23; F(1, 27) = 0.09, p = 0.77, g2p ¼ 0:003). There was
a two-way interaction between the action–omission con-
trast and dilemma order (F(1, 27) = 5.11, p = 0.03,
g2p ¼ 0:16) and a three-way interaction between the con-
trast, dilemma order, and question order (F(1, 27) = 9.28,
p = 0.005 g2p ¼ 0:26). In general, participants who received
the omission dilemma first judged the omission to be more
permissible (mean = 3.19, SE = 0.35) than those who re-
ceived the action dilemma first (mean = 1.87, SE = 0.37,
F(1, 29) = 6.73, p = 0.02, g2p ¼ 0:19. However, post hoc anal-
yses of the three-way interaction revealed that this differ-
ence held only among those participants who received the
moral question before the causal question (F(1, 14) = 13.76,
p = 0.002, g2p ¼ 0:50). Those participants who received both
the moral question and the omission dilemma first judged
the omission to be more permissible (mean = 4.13,
SE = 0.35) than the action (mean = 2.00, SE = 0.38;
F(1, 7) = 17.00, p = 0.004, g2p ¼ 0:71). The rest of the ques-
tion and dilemma order pairings showed no difference be-
tween action and omission judgments, and no differences
from one another for either the action or omission judg-
ments (all p’s > 0.14).
7.3. Discussion
Results from Condition 4 show that participants per-
ceived a statistically significant difference in causal
215
responsibility between action and omission for both moral
and non-moral dilemmas. For the moral dilemma, how-
ever, they did not perceive a corresponding difference in
moral permissibility; of potential relevance here is the fact
that participants’ causal judgments for both actions and
omissions were quite high for the moral case, which may
have resulted in a similar level of moral reprehension for
both action and omission. While omission judgments in
particular appeared to be sensitive to dilemma and ques-
tion order, this did not, on the whole, affect the relative dif-
ference or lack thereof between action and omission for
either the causal or moral judgments for this moral case.
When a person acts and a consequence ensues, we are
much more likely to perceive the causal connection be-
tween the act and the consequence than when a person
omits an action and a consequence ensues. Our common
sense experience should make this clear. After all, we are
constantly omitting actions, and there are consequences
that arise, but we are clearly not responsible for all, or even
a fraction of these consequences. Consistent with previous
philosophical and empirical work, this Mayan population,
on the whole, judged acting agents as more causally
responsible for the consequences of an event than omitting
agents (Baron, 1994; Cushman et al., 2006; Haidt & Baron,
1996; Hart & Honore, 1959; Ritov & Baron, 1990; Spranca
et al., 1991), and this attribution held for both a moral
and non-moral dilemma. The difference in causal responsi-
bility for actions and omissions appeared greater in the
non-moral than moral case although it showed some sen-
sitivity to order effects; further, for the moral case, partic-
ipants tended to see the protagonist as causally
responsible for the outcome in both action and omission
(i.e., means above 4), though more so in the action case.
However, because we only presented one dilemma each,
we cannot attribute this difference to moral context as op-
posed to details of the dilemma. We conclude that this Ma-
yan population perceives a distinction in causal
responsibility for actions and omissions in the absence of
seeing a moral difference.
8. Condition 5. Contrasting two different Mayan groups
In the introduction, we set up the design of these exper-
iments by pointing to the frequent, though certainly not
ubiquitous finding that people judge means-based harms
as worse than side-effects, and actions as worse than omis-
sions. We further stated that our studies with this Mayan
population implemented design features used in our inter-
net studies, including similar dilemmas, scales, and pre-
sentation mode (i.e., one vignette at a time as opposed to
paired dilemmas presented simultaneously). Though these
are important similarities, there are also potentially signif-
icant differences. For example, the internet sample judged
dilemmas that differed in terms of specific content and
precise wording (but not in terms of more general features
of the dilemma such as harms caused and lives saved, and
ongoing vs. introduced threats), using a different scale
(e.g., permissibility scale from 1 to 7), tested alone (as op-
posed to being in the presence of an experimenter). To be-
gin addressing some of these differences, we carried out a
216 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
within-population comparison of a group of adult Mayans
that was, on average, more educated and less rural. We
presented this population with a sample of the same
dilemmas, in Tseltal, as our more rural and less educated
Mayan population, and used the same scale.
We presented two pairs of dilemmas to this less rural,
more educated sample of 30 adult Mayans, two of whom
had participated in a prior condition (M = 7, F = 23, mean
age = 23.23 years (SD = 6.31, range 17–39), mean years of
schooling = 8.83 (SD = 1.21, range 6–12 years)). This sam-
ple had, on average, more contact with the municipal cen-
ter than our previous samples, which as noted in the
introduction is more urbanized and has more contact with
the non-indigenous, ladino population than the outlying
parajes. Ten of the participants resided in the municipal
center, and almost all would have traveled daily to the cen-
ter to attend secondary or preparatory school (equivalent
to middle and high school). It is also, on average, younger
than the previous sample – something that is difficult to
avoid given the changing rates of educational attainment
in the municipality.
While this sample is at once younger, more educated and
more urban than the other samples tested, the demograph-
ics of the region and the dynamics of community develop-
ment make this type of correlation difficult to avoid. Until
fairly recently, most individuals did not have access to
school beyond the 6th grade. Even today, the majority of
parajes do not have a secondary school (7–9th grade) and
there are currently only two high schools for the entire
municipality (10–12th grade). Our purpose, however, was
not to tease apart the individual contributions of these fac-
tors, but rather to provide an initial contrast with our target
Mayan population, matched for dilemmas, testing condi-
tions, language, and general geographic region and ethnic
identification. Specifically, we presented the contrast be-
tween means and side-effect for the ‘‘Truck” case from Con-
dition 1, and the contrast between action and omission for
the ”Boulder” case presented in Conditions 2 and 4. The or-
der of the dilemmas was randomized across participants;
these cases were selected because the first showed a strong
side-effect bias, and the second consistently, across two con-
ditions, showed no omission bias, while revealing a differ-
ence in causality.
This population of less rural, and more educated Ma-
yans judged the means-based harm as worse
(MMEANS = 2.30, SE = 0.20) than the side-effect harm
(MSIDE-EFFECT = 2.83, SE = 0.26; paired t(29) = 2.01,
p = 0.054, d = 0.42) for the truck dilemmas. They also
judged the action (MACT = 1.97, SE = 0.22) as worse than
the omission (MOMIT = 2.87, SE = 0.27; paired t(29) = 3.53,
p = 0.001, d = 0.67) for the boulder dilemmas.
8.1. Discussion
While both Mayan groups perceived a significant, moral
difference between means and side-effects, only the more
educated sample perceived a significant moral difference
between action and omission for a case that yielded no dif-
ference among the less educated group. These two Mayan
groups differed, however, in several respects, including
age, education, and exposure to an urban environment.
Any of these factors could be associated with the difference
in action–omission judgments between the two groups,
either instead of or in addition to a more general (and less
measurable) difference in cultural norms.
9. Overall analysis
Though work on the internet (Banerjee, Huebner, & Haus-
er, in press; Cushman et al., 2006; Hauser et al., 2007, in
press) has failed to reveal a consistently significant effect
of demographic factors on moral judgment, given the differ-
ence in both context and variation we decided to explore
these factors here, carrying out an overall analysis. Specifi-
cally, we regressed all major background characteristics
across the difference between action and omission judg-
ments for all action–omission cases presented to our Mayan
population. The limitation of this analysis is that it pools
across dilemmas varying in content, as well as in the severity
with which participants’ judged the protagonist’s decision
to act or omit an action. The advantage of this analysis is that
takes account of all of our cases, and allows us to look at the
contribution of different demographic factors such as age
and education.
Our regression analysis combined all of the action–
omission dilemma pairs across all conditions, with the
exception of Condition 4 since it included a causal as well
as a moral question. For conditions in which participants
received two action–omission pairs (‘‘Boat” and ‘‘Boulder”
in Condition 2, and ‘‘Vase” and ‘‘Pond” in Condition 3),
we included both and treated them as between-subjects
data for a total of 182 cases. For each case, we created a dif-
ference score by subtracting the action from the omission
judgment; higher (positive) scores indicate cases where ac-
tions are judged more severely than omissions. This differ-
ence served as the dependent variable in the regression
analysis. Independent variables consisted of two sets of
dummies controlling for condition and scenario, and covar-
iates of sex, age, years of schooling, and whether the partic-
ipant currently resided in the municipal center or in one of
the outlying parajes. Repetition of participants was not in-
cluded as only 8 of the 182 cases had prior participation.
A stepwise linear regression retained the dummy vari-
able controlling for the more educated, more urban condi-
tion (from Condition 5) as the only significant predictor of
the difference score ((b = 0.78, t = 2.88, p = 0.005). That is,
the average difference between action and omission judg-
ments was 0.78 points higher for the more educated, more
urban group (mean difference = 0.90, SE = 0.26) than for all
of the other conditions combined (mean difference = 0.125,
SE = 0.11; see Fig. 1). All other predictors were not
statistically significant (p’s > 0.43) and were removed
from the final regression model (Diff(Omit-Act) = 0.13 +
0.78  (Condition 5 dummy) + e). Although most of the var-
iation in the difference score was not explained by this
model (R2 = 0.04), the overall ANOVA confirmed that the
model was significant (F(1, 181) = 8.28, p = 0.005).
9.1. Discussion
This multivariate analysis yielded two relevant findings.
First, it showed that the responses from the less rural and
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
Fig. 1. Means and standard errors of the difference score (omission–action) for the less educated/more rural and more educated/less rural comparison
groups from the regression analysis comparing all of the action–omission cases (N = 182).
more educated Mayans (see Condition 5) differed from the
rest of the conditions on the critical action–omission con-
trast, showing a statistically significant interaction be-
tween the action–omission contrast and group.
Specifically, the difference between action and omission
judgments differed by almost a full point between our
two comparison groups, a fairly impressive difference gi-
ven a 5-point scale. Second, we found no effects of any of
the other background factors across all conditions. These
results held even when rerunning the analysis without
controlling for condition or scenario, thus avoiding any po-
tential collinearity with condition (p’s > 0.13).
10. General discussion
The goal of these studies was, at a general level, to build
on recent developments in experimental cultural psychol-
ogy (Atran et al., 2001; Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993; Hauser
et al., 2007; Henrich et al., 2005, 2006; O’Neill and Petrino-
vich, 1998; Sugiyama, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2002), designed
to complement existing ethnographies of small-scale soci-
eties by examining more systematically their underlying
psychology. More specifically, our goal was to extend exist-
ing empirical work on the nature of moral intuitions that,
up to the present, has largely focused on Western, industri-
alized populations (for exceptions, see Haidt et al., 1993;
O’Neill and Petrinovich, 1998).
The design of our study mirrored, as much as possible,
studies carried out on the internet using the Moral Sense
Test as this provided the largest baseline sample, robust re-
sults, and well tested dilemmas presented sequentially. As
a first attempt in this line of research, we sought to assess
whether people living in a small-scale, largely unschooled,
agrarian society would understand our adaptations of
these artificial moral dilemmas and perceive some of the
critical, targeted distinctions.
10.1. Summary of results
Results from our first condition suggested that the Ma-
yan participants comprehended the dilemmas and the
217
scales that accompanied them, and perceived a distinction
between means-based harms and side-effects. This signifi-
cant difference not only aligned well with our internet
sample in which subjects consistently judged means-based
harms as worse than side-effects (Cushman et al., 2006;
Hauser et al., 2007), but also showed that the translations
were sufficiently accurate to capture this difference. In a
follow up condition, using a different dilemma, partici-
pants again showed that they perceived a moral difference
between harms caused as a means to a greater good and
harms caused as a side-effect, suggesting that the means-
side-effect distinction is independent of the particular con-
tent of the scenario explored, although the particular struc-
ture of each dilemma may influence the strength of the
effect.
In contrast to the evidence for a side-effect bias in this
Mayan population, we did not find evidence for an omission
bias across five different pairs of dilemmas [including one
developed for young children], and nor did we find evi-
dence for a distinction between harm caused by contact
and harm caused by non-contact (one dilemma). The fact
that these distinctions did not trigger a morally salient con-
trast is unexpected when placed in the context of other
published studies with comparable methods (including
scenario content, sequential presentation of dilemmas,
and judgment scale). That is, a significant number of studies
have provided evidence of an omission bias, as well as evi-
dence for the importance of physical contact (Cushman
et al., 2006; Greene et al., 2001, 2009; Huebner et al., in
press; Baron & Ritov, 2004); for exceptions to the omission
bias, see (Connolly & Reb, 2003; Mandel & Vartanian, 2007;
Tanner & Medin, 2004). If we consider the conditions pre-
sented here, along with those presented in both Cushman
et al. (2006) and Hauser et al. (in press) – the most appro-
priate studies for comparison as they used comparable
dilemmas and presentation methods (i.e., sequential pre-
sentations, Likert-scale responses, carefully controlled and
matched hypothetical cases), we find that 11 out of 11 pairs
of act-omission dilemmas revealed an omission bias,
whereas 0 out of the 5 cases (and one replication) presented
to the target Mayan population showed an omission bias
218 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224

Table 2
A comparison of omission biases across studies.

N Scale (points) Omission bias? Mean diff. (omit–act) SD t Effect size (d) p-Level (2-tailed)
Cushman et al. (2006)
Boxcar 332 7 Yes 0.70 2.03 6.32 0.34 <0.001
Pond 332 7 Yes 1.69 2.00 15.34 0.84 <0.001
Ship 332 7 Yes 0.83 2.01 7.56 0.41 <0.001
Car 332 7 Yes 0.90 1.77 9.26 0.50 <0.001
Boat 332 7 Yes 0.98 1.98 8.97 0.49 <0.001
Switch 332 7 Yes 0.26 1.87 2.56 0.13 0.011

Hauser et al. (in press)

Boxcar 404 7 Yes 0.55 1.53 7.12 0.71 <0.001
Pond 404 7 Yes 1.29 1.80 14.43 1.45 <0.001
Car 404 7 Yes 0.75 1.71 10.43 1.05 <0.001
Boat 404 7 Yes 0.29 1.52 8.74 0.88 <0.001
Switch 404 7 Yes 0.55 1.53 2.62 0.26 <0.001

Target Mayan population

Condition 1
Truck 30 5 No 0.00 0.91 0.00 0.00 1.00
Condition 2
Boat 30 5 No 0.07 1.05 0.35 0.08 0.73
Boulder 30 5 No 0.30 1.71 0.96 0.22 0.34
Condition 3
Vase 31 5 No 0.07 1.26 0.28 0.06 0.78
Pond 31 5 No 0.19 1.64 0.66 0.13 0.52
Condition 4
Boulder 31 5 No 0.10 2.12 0.25 0.07 0.80

Educated Mayan population

Condition 5
Boulder 30 5 Yes 0.90 1.40 3.53 0.67 0.001

(see Table 2); for one of the cases given to this Mayan pop-
ulation (i.e., ‘‘Vase”), young Israeli children perceived an
omission bias (Knapfo & Hauser, unpublished data). Fur-
ther, the less rural and more educated Mayan sample
showed an omission bias using the same methods.
Though the consistency of the patterns among the
internet and Mayan sample are suggestive, they are hin-
dered by several critical differences that place limitations
on our conclusions regarding cross-cultural differences.
In particular, all of the internet studies had large sample
sizes, with hundreds of subjects responding to the moral
dilemmas. In contrast, all of the Mayan studies had sample
sizes between 29 and 31. Further, the internet populations
were far more heterogeneous than the Mayan populations,
with a much greater range of ages, educational and reli-
gious backgrounds, and experience with moral philosophy.
Given that some of the internet studies yielded statistically
significant effects for the target distinctions, but some-
times with small effect sizes (see Table 2), it is possible
that studies of small-scale societies are, by definition, hin-
dered by the limited sample sizes. That said, the samples
sizes used here were sufficient to detect statistically signif-
icant effects with the target Mayan population for two
means-side-effect dilemmas and two scenarios exploring
differences in causal responsibility, as well as a difference
among the educated Mayan population for one means-
side-effect case and one act-omission case.
The results presented in this paper represent only a first
step in the study of moral decision-making in small-scale
societies. We turn next to a more detailed discussion of
the patterns presented, and specifically, an attempt to ex-
plain why this Mayan population, and perhaps other
small-scale societies, may not perceive a moral difference
between actions and omissions, at least under the condi-
tions tested.
At least four factors are unlikely to have contributed to
the absence of an omission bias among the target Mayan
population. First, it seems unlikely that there are linguistic
complexities associated with translations of actions and
omissions, but not means and side-effects. Expressing
negation in Tseltal (i.e., that the protagonist did not act)
is straightforward and unambiguous. Moreover, neither
the Mayan participants nor the translator expressed any
particular difficulty with the action–omission cases as op-
posed to the means-side-effect cases. Further, for the
‘‘Boulder” dilemmas, though subjects did not report a mor-
al difference between the action and omission cases, they
did report a causal difference, again arguing that the key
distinction between action and omission was understood
by the participants and therefore translated appropriately.
Second, the absence of a perceived moral distinction be-
tween actions and omissions is unlikely to be mediated by
an inability to understand the dilemmas or to understand
and use the full dimensionality of the scale. Both within
and across conditions, participants responded appropri-
ately, with mean responses varying with the particular di-
lemma presented. In particular, some action–omission
pairs were judged more harshly overall than others, even
though participants appeared to perceive no moral differ-
ence between actions and omissions.
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
Third, the absence of an omission bias was not due to
cross-cutting effects related to causal attributions. In partic-
ular, though the target Mayan population did not express an
omission bias, they judged agents engaging in an action as
more causally responsible for the harm than agents engaged
in an omission; and they showed this difference in causal
attributions for one of the same cases in which they did
not show a difference in moral judgments (although they
did assign a high level of causal responsibility to both the ac-
tor and the omitter in this moral case). This pattern of assign-
ing greater causal responsibility to actions over omissions is
consistent with several other studies (Cushman et al., 2006;
Ritov & Baron, 1990; Spranca et al., 1991).
Fourth, the failure to treat actions as worse than omis-
sions is not due to an explicit law or religious doctrine,
such as the Good Samaritan Law, that is explicit in coun-
tries like France and Quebec. In such countries, the failure
to help someone in harm’s way is a moral transgression, on
a par with actively harming someone. In our review of the
relevant ethnographic literature, in addition to interviews
with local judges and community members of this Mayan
population, we found no evidence that would imply the
operation of an explicit law or social norm equivalent to
the Good Samaritan Law. This does not, of course, rule
out the possibility that an implicit norm has been internal-
ized among this population.
While we can only speculate, there are several charac-
teristics of the rural Mayan population we tested that, ta-
ken singularly or together, may provide enough of an
impetus to eliminate the moral distinction between ac-
tions and omissions resulting in harm, or possibly, to make
other distinctions more salient. We turn next to a discus-
sion of some of these characteristics and consider how
the quality of interpersonal relationships, causal belief sys-
tems, and community obligations in this small-scale soci-
ety may function to minimize the perceived moral
difference between actions and omissions.
10.2. Linking experimental results to Mayan life
As previously noted, daily life among the Maya of Ten-
ejapa is centered within extended family units residing in
small hamlets, or parajes, many of which have less than
500 residents (INEGI, 2005). From birth, children are inte-
grated to be fully participating members of these units. It
has therefore been argued that Mayan children grow up
in a state of permanent inter-subjectivity where they are
socialized to be in constant communication and synchroni-
zation with those around them (see Leon Pasquel, 2005, for
an analysis of early childhood socialization in Zinacantan, a
nearby Tsotsil Mayan community4). This sentiment is ech-
4
Tsotsil is a closely related language to Tseltal. Each language defines a
broad ethnolinguistic group which can be divided into different dialects
with even further cultural and linguistic distinctions between different
municipalities where each dialect is spoken. So the Tsotsil Maya of
Zinacantan are a different ethnolinguistic group from the Tseltal Maya of
Tenejapa. However, as the two are closely related and reside in the same
geographical region, they share many general social, cultural, and linguistic
characteristics. Since there are few ethnographies specific to Tenejapa (in
contrast to Zinacantan which has been extensively studied), we borrow
from the different ethnographies of the region where appropriate.
219
oed by Medina Hernandez (1991), who notes in his ethnog-
raphy of Tenejapa that the family socializes the individual to
participate in the wider institutions of Tenejapan society
whose structure and division of labor it mirrors.
Gossip within these tight-knit communities is a favorite
activity as well as a means of enforcing social norms,
including the need to fulfill family and community obliga-
tions, such as being a good worker, providing for one’s fam-
ily, and maintaining an orderly household (cf. Haviland,
1977, for an analysis of gossip in Zinacantan). Personal
and family histories are public knowledge and are often in-
voked retrospectively to account for conflict, illness or
harm. For example, Collier (1973), in her ethnographic
study of conflict in Zinacantan, found that conflicts were
generally complex affairs, rooted in the interpersonal
dynamics of a small, closed community. The goal of the
judge or mediator in such cases was not simply to deter-
mine the appropriate punishment, but to uncover and ad-
dress the underlying causes of a conflict, to ‘‘end the anger
in (people’s) heart” so that both parties might resume their
responsibilities and obligations toward their community
and one another (Collier, 1973, p. 101). It is possible, there-
fore, that our Mayan subjects were evaluating the actions
of the protagonists in the dilemmas within the context of
a wider social network or explanatory framework, and gi-
ven the emphasis on obligations, might very well code
inaction as a kind of action, thereby reducing the moral dif-
ference between actions and omissions.
This framework may be underwritten by a belief in a
moral universe where harm eventually begets retaliatory
harm. Victims may inflict harm on their perpetrators either
by directly bargaining with the gods in an act of witchcraft,
or indirectly as the wounded soul cries out to the gods for
justice (Collier, 1973). Such beliefs have certainly dimin-
ished in recent years; however, the accusation that some-
one is an ak-chamel, literally giver of sickness, are not
uncommon, and the services of traditional healers who
specialize in diagnosing and curing such illnesses are still
sometimes sought, often alongside allopathic or Western
remedies (see e.g., Berlin & Berlin, 1996; Granich, Cantwell,
Long, Maldonado, & Parsonnet, 1999). These healers,
known as pik’-k’ab in Tseltal (pulseadores or pulse readers),
question the patient about his or her interpersonal history,
especially any conflicts or misgivings, and then listen to
the patient’s pulse for any signs while reciting specific
names (Villa Rojas, 1990, for detailed descriptions of these
interactions [carried out in the 1940s] in Tenejapa). These
interrogations may reveal a causal chain where even sim-
ple offenses, including the omission to act in the expected
or appropriate way, may be believed to have resulted in a
retributional illness. These highly personal beliefs may
help bind individuals into a kind of social contract where
all parties must try to preserve good will among all, while
reinforcing the notion that even intentions, be they real, in-
ferred or imagined, may result in harm.
These principles have been framed more positively in
more contemporary ethnographies, no doubt influenced
by indigenous movements for self-determination. For
example, based on his many years of living and working
among the Tojolobal, a related Mayan population, Lenkers-
dorf (2002) concurred that Mayan justice is recuperative
220 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
rather than punitive, with the goal of reintegrating the
strayed individual into the community and restoring a
sense of harmony and balance among all. This principle,
expressed as jultesbeyel ch’ulel in Tseltal – literally to make
the soul of the other return – suggests a moral obligation in
which community members are actively responsible for
guiding one another towards the common end of achieving
a good life for all (see Paoli (2003) for a sociolinguistic
analysis of this and other Tseltal concepts related to educa-
tional and social values in the community). In light of these
principles, the failure of the rural Mayans to express a mor-
al distinction between actions and omissions becomes a
plausible consequence of the social and moral premiums
exacted from community ties.
While these observations do not license definitive con-
clusions, together they paint a portrait of a small-scale
society characterized by ‘‘personal intimacy, emotional
depth, moral compromise, and social cohesion” (Paoli,
2003, p. 25), where the well-being of all is dependent on
maintaining good relations among all, and where there is
a special emphasis placed on the mutual obligations and
responsibilities entailed by living in a community. Said
simply, because of the relatively small-scale of the Tene-
japa community, not only do people hold each other
responsible for their obligations, but are vigilant and
responsive to situations in which individuals fail to uphold
their obligations by omitting particular actions.
Haidt and Baron (1996), using scenarios similar to the
ones we used here, found that manipulating social dimen-
sions such as the proximity between characters, affected
participants’ moral judgments regarding actions and omis-
sions. For example, while US college students judged
harmful actions to be worse than harmful omissions, this
difference diminished when the omission resulted in harm
to a close friend or kin as opposed to a stranger. That is, the
failure to prevent harm (an omission) from occurring to a
close relation was judged similarly to committing a harm-
ful act. Further, in a study by Miller et al. (1990), results
showed that subjects from the city of Mysore, India were
more likely than Americans subjects from New Haven,
Connecticut to judge hypothetical scenarios involving the
omission of help as a moral wrong, regardless of the sever-
ity of the consequences and the nature of the relationship
between participants; Americans tended to view most of
these cases in terms of personal choice.
Together, these studies reveal a role for cultural experi-
ence, and support the possibility that in a small-scale soci-
ety such as the Mayans of Tenejapa, the highly intertwined
nature of social relationships and their associated obliga-
tions may have reduced the perceived moral distinction
between actions and omissions. As noted in Collier’s
(1973) anthropological study of conflict and law in Zina-
cantan, observations suggested that intentions and mo-
tives, often inferred from complex histories of past
relationships, were more important than actions in assign-
ing blame and determining harm.
The pattern presented in this paper is also consistent
with the empirical work and theoretical considerations
presented by Haidt and Baron (1996), who have argued
that the distinction between actions and omissions is sen-
sitive to social distance. The results presented here not
only support this perspective, but raise the question of
whether all small-scale societies, regardless of their life-
styles as hunter-gatherers, subsistence farmers, or people
from an industrialized nation living in a small rural hamlet,
will judge actions as comparable to omissions with respect
to moral permissibility, or whether this is something un-
ique to the characteristics of this particular Mayan popula-
tion. For example, though the primary measured difference
between our two Mayan populations was level of educa-
tion, it is possible that the less rural population had a wider
circle of less close relationships, and perhaps less of a sense
of obligation to others which might show up in court re-
cords. Further exploration of how, cross-culturally, intui-
tive judgments of right and wrong track explicit
decisions from courts or other systems of authority are
needed to fully test these ideas.
These results also raise questions about the starting-
state of our moral sense, and the extent to which specific
cultural factors can change the nature of our intuitive judg-
ments. Given the considerable evidence from philosophical
discussion (Kamm, 2007), results from a large population
of Western industrialized subjects (Cushman et al., 2006;
Hauser et al., 2007; Mikhail, 2000, 2007), preliminary evi-
dence from young children (Cushman et al., in preparation;
Knafo & Hauser, in preparation), and the present Mayan re-
sults, it appears that the side-effect bias is relatively robust
across cultural variation in age, sex, religious background,
education, and size of community. In contrast, the omis-
sion bias appears to be more open to contextual and cul-
tural variation. The fact that Mayan adults from our
target rural population did not express a moral distinction
between actions and omissions suggests that something
about this particular Mayan culture, or perhaps small-scale
societies more generally, is causally relevant. At this point,
we are not able to pinpoint the precise cause of this differ-
ence, but at least two testable alternatives are possible.
First, given that young children perceive a distinction be-
tween actions and omissions, it is possible that this repre-
sents the starting-state for all children; that is, once the
relevant capacity to link cause and effect kicks in, all chil-
dren perceive actions as worse than omissions. Soon there-
after, certain kinds of culturally-relevant experiences may
eliminate or lessen this distinction. Second, there may be
no universally instantiated starting-state. Instead, cultural
experiences may, early in development, either support or
eliminate a moral difference between actions and
omissions.
We consider the results presented here as a starting
point for further experimental research and discussion of
which morally relevant psychological distinctions are uni-
versal, which open to cross-cultural variation, and how
experience and development can create distinct moral sig-
natures (Haidt, 2007; Hauser, 2006a; Kohlberg, 1981; Turi-
el, 1983). Ultimately, this research may suggest that some
psychological distinctions are moral absolutes, true
(descriptively) in all cultures, whereas others may be more
plastic, relative to a culture’s social dynamics, mating
behavior, and belief systems. We leave for future discus-
sion how a project on descriptive moral relativism con-
nects with prescriptive moral relativism, and in
particular, how it might connect to metaethical concerns
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
that target the question of whether there are moral truths
that hold universally.
Acknowledgments
For help with selecting some of the dilemmas, and for
providing unpublished data, we thank Fiery Cushman. For
help with some of the statistical analyses, we thank Ansgar
Endress. For comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript,
we thank Jonathan Baron, Penny Brown, Jane Collier, Ben
Fraser, Jonathan Haidt, Bryce Huebner, Richard Nisbett,
and three anonymous reviewers for Cognition. Funding
for this project was provided to MDH by an NSF-HSD grant,
and from grants by J. Epstein and S. Shuman. Funding to LA
was provided by a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fel-
lowship from the US Dept. of Education and a Harvard Uni-
versity Traveling Fellowship. Special thanks to the
community of Tenejapa, and especially to Antonieta Lopez
Santiz and family for her assistance in translating and run-
ning the studies.
Appendix A. Dilemmas used with the Mayan
population, back-translated into English from Tseltal
A.1. Condition 1
Side-effect killing [truck] = ‘‘A man is sitting at the side of
the road. He sees a truck coming very fast. It is headed
straight towards five men. The five men do not hear or
see that the truck is coming. If no one realizes that it is
coming, the five men will die by being run over by the
truck. On the other side of the road there is another man
sitting beside his house. If the first man who is standing
at the side of the road shouts, ‘‘Watch out!” to the driver
of the truck, the driver will swerve the truck away from
the five men so they will not die, but towards the one
man sitting beside his house. Thus, the man sitting beside
his house will die by being run over by the truck. If the man
sitting at the side of the road does not speak – if he does
not warn the driver – the truck will continue straight to-
wards the five men. Thus the five men will die, but the
one man sitting beside his house will not die. Thus for this
reason, the man shouts, ‘‘Watch out!” to the driver of the
truck. Thus, the driver swerves the truck. Thus, the five
men are saved and the one man dies.”
Means-non-contact killing [truck] = ‘‘A man is sitting at
the side of the road. He sees a truck coming very fast. It
is headed straight towards five men. The five men do not
hear or see that the truck is coming. If no one realizes that
it is coming, the five men will die by being run over by the
truck. On the other side of the road there is another man
sitting beside his house. If the first man who is standing
at the side of the road shouts, ‘‘Come here!” to the other
man sitting beside his house – if he calls the other man
over – the other man will walk into the middle of the road.
Thus, the other man will die from being run over by the
truck. But thus, he will block/stop the truck so that it will
not continue toward the five men. Thus, the five men will
be saved. If the man sitting at the side of the road does not
speak – if he does not call the other man over – the other
221
man will not die, but the truck will continue towards the
five men. Thus the five men will die. Thus for this reason,
the man shouts, ‘‘Come here!” – he calls the other man over.
Thus, the other man walks into the middle of the road.
Thus, the five men are saved and the one man dies.”
Omission, letting die [truck] = ‘‘A man is sitting at the side
of the road. He sees a truck coming very fast. It is headed
straight towards five men. The five men do not hear or
see that the truck is coming. If no one realizes that it is
coming, the five men will die by being run over by the
truck. On the other side of the road there is another man
starting to walk onto the road. If he walks into the middle
of the road, he will die by being run over by the truck. But
thus, he will block/stop the truck so that it will not con-
tinue toward the five men. Thus, the five men will be
saved. If the man sitting at the side of the road shouts,
‘‘Watch out!” to the man starting to walk onto the road –
if he warns the other man – the other man will remain
standing. He will not walk onto the road. Thus, he will
not die. But thus, the truck will continue towards the five
men. Thus the five men will die. If the man sitting at the
side of the road does not shout – if he does not warn the
other man – the other man will walk into the middle of
the road. Thus, he will die by being run over by the truck.
But thus, the five men will not die. Thus for this reason, the
man does not shout – he does not warn the other man.
Thus the other man walks into the middle of the road.
Thus, the five men are saved and the one man dies.”
Means-contact killing [truck] = ‘‘A man is sitting at the
side of the road. He sees a truck coming very fast. It is
headed straight towards five men. The five men do not
hear or see that the truck is coming. If no one realizes that
it is coming, the five men will die by being run over by the
truck. There is another man standing beside the man sit-
ting at the side of the road. If the man who is sitting at
the side of the road pushes the other man into the middle
of the road, the other man will die by being run over by the
truck. But thus, he will block/stop the truck so that it will
not continue toward the five men. Thus, the five men will
be saved. If the man sitting at the side of the road does not
push the other man into the middle of the road, the other
man will not die, but the truck will continue towards the
five men. Thus, the five men will die. Thus for this reason,
he pushes the other man into the middle of the road. Thus,
the five men are saved and the one man dies.”
A.2. Condition 2
Killing [boat] = ‘‘There is a man in his boat. He is carrying
a net to catch fish, when he sees that there are five men
drowning in the river in front of his boat. There is another
man in between the front of his boat and where the five
men are. The other man knows how to swim. The man in
his boat knows that the other man will not die. The man
in the boat wants to save the five men that are drowning.
If he steers his boat towards the men, his net for catching
fish will drag over the swimming man and kill him, but
he will save the five men. If the man in the boat pulls the
net into the inside of his boat, he will be late as a result.
Thus, the five men will die. If the man in the boat does
nothing, the five men will die, but the one man who knows
222 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
how to swim will live. Thus, the man in the boat thinks if
he can/should help the five men or only help the one. Thus
he helps the five men, thus only the one man dies from
being dragged by his fishing net.”
Letting die [boat] = ‘‘There is a man in his boat, when he
sees that there are five men drowning in the river in front
of his boat. He begins to steer his boat towards the five
men because he wants to save them. Then he sees that
there is another man who is drowning in between the front
of his boat and where the five men are. There is not enough
time to save all the six men that are in the water. The man
who is in his boat thinks to himself who he can/should help
for this reason. He knows that if he helps the five men, the
one man will die. If he helps the one man, the five men will
die. Thus, he helps the five men, thus only the one man
dies.”
Killing [boulder] = ‘‘A man is farming on the side of a hill.
He sees a boulder coming down towards five men that are
at the bottom of the hill. The five men do not hear or see
that the boulder is coming. If no one realizes that the boul-
der is coming, the five men will die by being smashed by
the boulder. On the other side/across the way is another
man. If the farmer shouts, ‘‘Come here!” to the other man
– if he calls the other man over – the other man will walk
into the path of the boulder. Thus, the other man will die
from being smashed by the boulder. But thus, he will
block/stop the boulder so that it will not continue toward
the five men. Thus, the five men will be saved. If the farmer
does not speak – if he does not call the other man over –
the other man will not die, but the five men will die from
being smashed by the boulder. Thus for this reason, the
farmer calls the other man over. Thus, the five men are
saved and the one man who he calls over dies.”
Letting die [boulder] = ‘‘A man is farming on the side of a
hill. He sees a boulder coming down towards five men that
are at the bottom of the hill. The five men do not hear or
see that the boulder is coming. If no one realizes that the
boulder is coming, the five men will die by being smashed
by the boulder. On the other side is another man starting to
walk into the path of the boulder. If he walks into the path
of the boulder, he will die by being smashed by the boul-
der. But thus, he will block/stop the boulder so that it will
not continue toward the five men. Thus, the five men will
be saved. If the farmer shouts, ‘‘Watch out!” to the other
man – if he warns the other man – the other man will re-
main standing. Thus he will not die by being smashed by
the boulder, but the boulder will continue towards the five
men. Thus the five men will die. If the farmer does not
shout – if he does not warn the other man – the other
man will walk into the path of the boulder. He will die
by being smashed by the boulder. But thus, the five men
will not die. Thus for this reason, the farmer does not shout
– he does not warn the other man. Thus, the five men are
saved and the one man dies.”
A.3. Condition 3
A.3.1. Means-side-effect
Means killing [peccaries] = ‘‘A woman has gone out to
pick fruit with six babies. She sees ripe fruit at the top of
the tree. The tree is very tall. Slowly, she climbs to where
the fruit is in the tree. She is carrying one baby. She leaves
the five other babies there at the bottom of the tree. When
she reaches the top of the tree, she sees a pack of peccaries.
They are running towards the five babies. The woman
knows that the peccaries will trample and kill the babies.
The only thing that the woman can do is to throw down
the baby that she is carrying towards the peccaries. Thus,
the peccaries will be frightened away. If she throws the
baby down, it will die. Thus, she throws down the baby,
thus the one baby dies and the five babies are saved.”
Side-effect killing [peccaries] = ‘‘A woman has gone out to
pick fruit with six babies. She sees ripe fruit at the top of
the tree. The tree is very tall. Slowly, she climbs to where
the fruit is in the tree. She is carrying one baby. She leaves
the five other babies there at the bottom of the tree. When
she reaches the top of the tree, she sees a pack of peccaries.
They are running towards the five babies. The woman
knows that the peccaries will trample and kill the babies.
The only thing that the woman can do is to go down
quickly and frighten away the peccaries. In order to climb
down quickly, she must drop down the baby that she is
carrying. If the baby drops down, it will die. Thus, she
drops down the baby, thus the one baby dies and the five
babies are saved.”
A.4. Action–omission
A.4.1. Children version
Action [Vase] = ‘‘Lucia is standing there close to her sis-
ter’s vase by the window. If the wind enters, the vase will
fall down and it will break. The window is closed. Never-
theless, Lucia knows that if she opens the window, the
wind will enter, the vase will fall down, and it will break.
Lucia wants to play with her dog; however, her dog is
asleep. She knows that if the vase breaks, the dog will wake
up. Thus for this Lucia opens the window. Thus, the wind
enters. The vase falls down. It breaks. Thus because of this,
the dog wakes up so that it can play with Lucia.”
Omission [Vase] = ‘‘Juana is standing there close to her
sister’s vase by the window. If the wind enters, the vase
will fall down and it will break. The window is open. Juana
knows that if she does not close the window, the wind will
enter, the vase will fall down, and it will break. Juana
wants to play with her dog; however, her dog is asleep.
She knows that if the vase breaks, the dog will wake up.
Thus, for this, Juana does not close the window. Thus, the
wind enters. The vase falls down. It breaks. Thus because
of this, the dog wakes up so that it can play with Juana.”
A.4.2. Adult version
Killing [Pond] = ‘‘Jose is going for a walk in the moun-
tains. He comes across a paraje that he does not know.
He hears talk that there is a man who has fallen into an en-
chanted lagoon there. However, the man did not die from
the spell of the spirit of the lagoon. If the man does not
die by sunrise, another five men will have to be sacrificed
to the lagoon. Jose is a medicine man. He knows that if
he gives poison to the man who fell into the lagoon, he will
die from it. Thus, they will not sacrifice the five men. If he
does not give the poison, the man will not die. Thus, they
will sacrifice the five men. Thus, for this reason, Jose gives
 L. Abarbanell, M.D. Hauser / Cognition 115 (2010) 207–224
the poison to the one man. Thus, the one man dies, thus the
five men remain living.”
Letting die [Pond] = ‘‘Roberto is going for a walk in the
mountains. He comes across a paraje that he does not
know. He hears talk that there is a man who has fallen into
an enchanted lagoon there. However, the man did not die
from the spell of the spirit of the lagoon. If the man does
not die by sunrise, another five men will have to be sacri-
ficed to the lagoon. Roberto is a medicine man. He sees that
the man who fell into the lagoon drank poison. Roberto
knows that there is medicine so that one will not die if
one drinks poison. If he does not give the medicine to the
man, the man will die by sunrise from the poison. Thus,
they will not sacrifice the five men. If he gives the medicine
to the man, the man will not die, and they will sacrifice the
five men. Thus for this reason, Roberto does not give the
man the poison. Thus, the one man dies, thus the five
men remain living.”
A.5. Condition 4
Action [fruit tree] = ‘‘Juan is going for a walk in the
mountains when he comes across a pond. There is a bana-
na tree that has fallen into the pond. However, it has not
fallen to the bottom of the pond – it is floating on top of
the pond. If it does not fall to the bottom by sunrise, many
flies will come to eat the fruit. Juan knows that there is one
tree branch because of which the banana tree will not sink
– it is floating on top of the tree branch. If he cuts off the
tree branch, the banana tree will fall to the bottom of the
water – thus, the flies will not come. If he does not cut
off the branch, the banana tree will not fall to the bottom
of the water – thus, the flies will come. Thus, for this rea-
son, Juan cuts off the branch.”
Omission [fruit tree] = ‘‘Alfonso is going for a walk in the
mountains when he comes across a pond. There is a bana-
na tree that has fallen into the pond. However, it has not
fallen to the bottom of the pond – it is floating on top of
the pond. If it does not fall to the bottom by sunrise, many
flies will come to eat the fruit. Alfonso knows that there is
one tree branch that is filling with water – thus it is weigh-
ing down the tree. If he does not cut off the tree branch, the
banana tree will fall to the bottom of the pond – thus, the
flies will not come. If he cuts off the tree branch, the bana-
na tree will not fall to the bottom of the pond – thus the
flies will come. Thus, Alfonso does not cut off the tree
branch.”
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