Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The present study explores moral judgments in COVID-19 dilemmas involving allocation of two types of resources – ventilators or beds. Utilitarian principles are opposed to random allocation and first-come, first-served. In triage dilemmas there are two patients in a critical state either needing a ventilator or a bed but only one is available. The results show different patterns of moral judgments depending on the type of the resource. If ventilators are allocated, the utilitarian principles are supported. But if the limited resource is a bed, first-come, first-served is preferred thus casting doubt on the egalitarian nature of this principle. Participants also rated their agreement with several triage principles. Four clusters of participants are identified. The first has a uniform distribution of preferences over all principles; the second favors all utilitarian principles; the third - only one utilitarian principle (higher chances of recovery); and the fourth - the first-come, first-served principle.