Do Moral Gains Necessarily Entail Moral Losses?

Moral decisions often involve difficult trade-offs. Triage systems in emergency departments require nurses to prioritize care for some patients over others. Generously donating to a particular charitable organization detracts from the means to give to other causes. These situations are sometimes described as “zero-sum,” meaning that benefits along one dimension entail equivalent costs along another dimension, generally due to finite resources or other constraints. However, it is sometimes possible to treat these cases as non-zero-sum, such that one moral win doesn’t necessarily entail a corresponding moral loss. For example, emergency departments could increase efficiency to treat more patients, and a person could donate a greater proportion of their income to benefit additional organizations.

Zero-sum thinking is pervasive in moral situations. This is unfortunate, as believing that moral decisions inherently trade wins for losses reduces overall moral gains.

Is there a “finite pool of worry”?

Some have argued that people generally operate with a limited amount of moral concern at their disposal. An indirect source of evidence for this claim comes from findings that there are similar levels of altruism expressed across various ideological groups, age groups, and other group boundaries. When examining donation behaviors, there are approximately equivalent levels of overall contributions given by liberals and conservatives, despite differences in the specific causes that members of these groups tend to support. This equivalence is also reflected in abstract expressions of moral valuation in liberals and conservatives. My own research has suggested that people who prioritize human outgroups over the natural world have similar levels of moral concern as people who prioritize nature over outgroups. Additionally, moral development seems to entail a reallocation (rather than an expansion) of moral concern; 4-year-olds and 10-year-olds have similarly expansive moral circles.

However, there are important challenges to the claim that moral concerns for some issues detract from moral concerns for other issues. Even though concerns about public health increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, this did not appear to decrease concerns about climate change. At an individual level, prejudices seem to hang together; people who devalue certain groups (e.g., racial minorities) also harbor a constellation of other prejudicial attitudes. This suggests that moral constriction on some dimensions begets moral constriction on other dimensions. Cases of extraordinary altruists who have elevated prosociality on multiple fronts similarly challenge the notion of a “finite pool of worry”as an inherent feature of moral psychology. Morality is not always zero-sum, and some people realize this more than others.

Source: Copilot / Microsoft

When does zero-sum thinking occur?

People may overestimate the extent to which zero-sum moral conflicts exist. In general, people have a pervasive bias to treat situations as zero-sum; some scholars have argued that a “fixed pie assumption” is a “fundamental bias in human judgment.” For example, people generally believe that they must choose between maximizing either honesty or kindness, rather than seeking ways to uphold both values. However, creative thinking about moral situations that initially seem zero-sum can yield win-win solutions, as when people find ways to express honest criticism in ways that emphasize care for the recipient.

Zero-sum thinking emerges more readily in some contexts than others, and rates of zero-sum thinking vary across individuals and cultural contexts. Some studies have indicated that people engage in zero-sum thinking whenever it serves their interests. For instance, liberals and conservatives both think the world is zero-sum in certain contexts, just for different kinds of resources. Liberals are more likely to construe economic issues—like wealth distribution—as zero-sum (e.g., thinking that people with high incomes gain at the expense of people with low incomes), whereas conservatives are more likely to construe social issues—like privilege—as zero-sum (e.g., thinking that reducing discrimination against marginalized groups entails increased discrimination against high-power groups).

Zero-sum thinking may also occur when reflecting on one’s own moral character and in deciding how to act in future situations. Some research suggests that people may strive for moral “balance” across time, by weighing current decisions against previous actions in order to maintain a particular average level of moral goodness across contexts. Under this model, virtuous actions can license later immoral actions.

What are the consequences of zero-sum thinking?

Our ability to act morally may be limited by construing moral situations as zero-sum even when they aren’t. If people consider moral concern to be a finite, zero-sum resource, they are likely to become more sparing in their acts of altruism. Research has shown that believing more strongly in a zero-sum relationship between humans and the environment is predictive of reduced prosociality toward humans as well as reduced environmentalist behaviors. Additionally, thinking that empathy is a limited resource is predictive of reduced empathy for members of outgroups, while believing that empathy is unlimited increases empathic responses to outgroup members without decreasing empathic responses to ingroup members.

Moral decisions in zero-sum contexts are often tragic, as they yield moral losses that are commensurate with moral gains. However, there may be non-zero-sum solutions to be discovered even when a moral situation appears to be zero-sum. Furthermore, failing to notice the potential for win-win opportunities can yield overall reductions in moral behavior. Thus, it is likely that a world of good could emerge from escaping zero-sum thinking by vigilantly searching for non-zero-sum solutions.