AP Research Study on Morality
 By Angel Espinosa

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey! Please consider this information carefully before continuing to participate in this research. 

 

Developed by Angel Espinosa, a senior student at Vineland High School. This survey was designed to examine a range of moral beliefs of South Jersey teenagers and the possible influences of such beliefs. You will be asked to make judgments about individuals and actions in specific scenarios. This research is simply interested in your judgment. At the end of this study, an explanation of the questions that motivate this line of research will be provided. 

For the most accurate results, your answers must be honest and NO part of this test should be shared with others.

 

Thank you again, feel free the share the survey with other friends in the area without providing information about the containments of the survey. Please go to the next page for more info/consent.

This survey is entirely anonymous and will take approximately 15 minutes of your time.

 

- Willingly take this survey as an "of age" (18+) participant or with the consent of parents/guardians.

- Be honest in your answers and take the survey seriously.
- Allow Angel to use your responses for his research and analysis.

 

- Your information is private and will not be used outside this research. 

- Your name will not be attached to your responses even in the discussion section of the research's findings.

- You can leave at any time if needed.

- These questions do not have a back button. Your responses will be final. Please ensure you selected your most accurate response.

- You can be contacted (through email) by Angel if questions arise
- You may also contact Angel, [email protected], if you have any questions. 

Watch the following three videos.

 

 

 

 

Watch the following three videos.

 

A runaway train without breaks is heading down the tracks toward five workers. If continued on its path, the train will kill all five workers. Next to you is a lever that, if flipped, will cause the train to follow a different track killing one worker, saving the five. 

Flipping the lever, killing the one worker is:
4 - Permissible

A runaway train without breaks is heading down the tracks toward five workers. If continued on its path, the train will kill all five workers. You stand above the tracks on a bridge. Next to you, on the same bridge, is a very large man. The only way to save the five workers below is to push the man off the bridge, stopping the train and killing him in the process. Although the stranger dies if you push him, the lives of the five workers will be saved. 

Pushing the large man onto the tracks is:
4 - Permissible

You are a writer at a local news company. While writing a paper on a major event, you head to the bathroom but leave your computer turned on in your office. The next day you walk into the office and hear celebrations going on, chanting for your biggest rival. He published a paper on the exact same major event and it went viral. A huge success for the company that allows for the company to be recognized nationwide. However, upon reading, the paper published was completely copied from the paper you had written. Destroying your rival's credibility may hurt the company's reputation in the public's eyes now that it has gone nationally recognized. However, all credit has been given to him and in order to ensure you receive all credit you must openly expose him in front of the whole company leading to his reputation loss as a writer. 

Exposing the paper your rival wrote is:
4 - Permissible

Your six-year-old daughter has come down with a highly fatal infection. However, there is a medicine that has cured this same infection but will cost twenty dollars. Without any sort of income, you must figure out a way to buy this medicine within the next twenty-four hours. At a local park, you spot a young man. You have seen this man before and are aware of his tremendous wealth. While he is busy on the phone watching his children playing in a sandbox, you notice a wallet poke out of his back pocket. You know he is too busy to feel your presence and you have the chance to grab his wallet, grab a twenty-dollar bill, and place the wallet back before he can notice. Although you don't know what he plans to do with the bill, you will use the money to buy your daughter's medicine and save her life. 

Pickpocketing the rich man for your daughter's health is:
4 - Permissible

Today is your only child's sixth birthday. However, you are struggling to make ends meet. Although you and your child have shelter, food is always minimal and has often made your child very sick. At a local park, you find a twenty-dollar bill on the ground and decide to pick it up. However, you notice a nearby homeless man under a cardboard box scrabbling around searching for the bill that slipped out of his hand. Upon closer look, the man is blind and he begins to call out in hopes of someone helping him obtain the bill. Although he has a few extra dollars, his only shelter is the cardboard box, and he has to settle on the leftovers people bring to him in sympathy. Using the money you can afford to buy your child a decent meal and possibly a small gift for their birthday.

Keeping the bill for yourself is:
4 - Permissible

You are negotiating with a powerful and determined terrorist who is about to set off a bomb in a crowded area. Your one advantage is that you have his teenage son in your custody. There is only one thing that you can do to stop him from detonating his bomb, which will kill thousands of people if detonated. To stop him, you must contact him over the satellite hook-up that he has established and, in front of the camera, break one of his son's arms and then threaten to break the other one if he does not give himself up. 

Breaking the terrorist's son's arm is:
4 - Permissible

You are a waiter at a local restaurant. As you are serving another customer, you hear a customer two tables across say that he is about to go to jail, and in his last 24 hours of freedom, he plans to infect as many people as possible with multiple STDs. You find out from his order that he happens to have a sesame allergy. If he eats even a seed of sesame he will have a severe allergic reaction, go into shock, and be hospitalized for at least 24 hours. 

Causing this man to have a serious allergic reaction is:
4 - Permissible

On a family road trip to Arizona, you and your family (your spouse and three children) go off-road to set camp to sleep for the night. Inadvertently, you set up camp on a clan's sacred ground. According to the laws of the land, the clan leader says your whole family must be put to death. However, he will let you, your spouse, and your two other children live if you yourself will kill your oldest child. 

Killing your oldest child is:
4 - Permissible

You and a group of two more friends all witness a woman being harassed by two men on the street. The group sympathizes with the woman and wants to help, however, one of your friends notices the men are each carrying something in their pockets and argues that it's best not to get involved and avoid danger. Your phones were left at a friend's house and choosing to leave the woman will result in any other action being too late to help her. Your two friends leave the choice to you. The three of you agree that you can handle them but are unsure if everyone will make it out unharmed/alive depending on what they are hiding.   

Getting involved to help the woman:
4 - Permissible

In a mountaineering expedition, your group is left stranded in the wilderness. With no communication devices, it may take weeks for a helicopter flying around to find your smoke signal. As the leader of the expedition, you know that the expedition includes a family of five with a vitamin deficiency genetic mutation. A few people's kidneys contain large amounts of this vitamin. A single man, with no living direct family members, has such a kidney. The only way to save the family of five is to remove this man's kidneys so the vitamins may be extracted from it. He will not die, however, his health will be compromised. The man argues against doing so, but you have the power to do as you see fit.

Forcibly removing this man's kidney is:
4 - Permissible

You won an all expensis paid cruise trip to The Bahamas! However, during the cruise an explosion in the boiling room led to a large fire on the boat and the ship had to be abandoned. Life rafts were used to save the lives of the passengers, however, the lifeboat you are sitting in is overfilled with people and comes close to the water. As the sea starts to get rough, the boat starts to fill with water and if nothing is done, it will sink before rescue boats arrive and everyone on your raft will die, including you. To your left is a person, injured in the explosion, who will not survive in any case. If you throw that person off the raft, the boat will last long enough for rescue to arrive and every passenger will be saved. 

Throwing the injured person overboard is:
4 - Permissible

In a dystopian world led by an angry tyrant, your apartment complex was randomly chosen by one of the tyrant's scientist as participants for his next experiment. The participants will participate in painful experiments on humans that inevitably lead to death. For his next experiment, he requires at least one child from each room to participate, but he will allow you to choose which of your children will be experimented on. You have twenty-four hours to bring one of your children (ages eight and five) to him. If you choose not to bring one of your children, the angry tyrant will send a team to find both and the experiment will be conducted on both of them. 

Bringing one of your children to the scientist is:
4 - Permissible

The year is 2143, and a viral epidemic with double the infection rate and triple the fatality rate of COVID-19 has quickly spread. In your home laboratory, you developed two different vaccines but forgot to label either. One is deadly and will result in the death of whoever takes it, the other is the vaccine you can use to save the few billions of people already infected. You have two people with you under your care, and the only way to verify which vaccine is correct is to inject each of these people with one of the two vaccines. One person will die, the other will live, and you will be able to start saving lives with the vaccine. 

Killing one of these people with a deadly injection is:
4 - Permissible

During wartime, your city was overrun by enemy soldiers. The general commander orders soldiers to kill all remaining citizens. You and some of your neighbors quickly hide in the cellar of a nearby mansion. While in the cellar you hear the voices of a few soldiers searching the house for valuables. Your baby begins to cry loudly. You cover its mouth to block the sound. If you choose to remove your hand from your baby's mouth, its crying will alert the soldiers who will kill you, your child, and the others hiding in the cellar. To save yourself and the others you must tightly cover your baby's mouth, smothering your baby to death. 

Smothering your child is:
4 - Permissible

You are the leader of Alpha Team 3, a small group of elite soldiers in the army. On your way back from a mission in enemy territory, one of your men has stepped into a trap set by the enemy and is gravely injured. The trap immediately alerts the enemy to your presence through radio signals. They will arrive shortly. If the enemy finds your injured man they will interrogate, torture, and kill him. He begs you not to leave him behind, but if you try to take him the full team will be compromised and captured by the enemy moments after. Although you are sure that his loyalty will mean the enemy will get nothing from interrogation, the only way to prevent the injured soldier from being tortured is to shoot him yourself. 

Shooting this soldier is:
4 - Permissible