Trait psychopathy and utilitarian moral judgement: The mediating role of action aversion

Although past research has established that the utilitarian bias (increased willingness to agree to personally kill someone for the greater good) in psychopathy on moral dilemmas stems from weaker negative affect at the prospect of harming others due to reduced harm aversion, it remains to be seen if this is owing to reduced aversion to witnessing harmful outcomes (outcome aversion) or performing harmful actions (action aversion). In this study, we show that trait psychopathy is associated with both reduced outcome and action aversion and that only action aversion negatively mediates the influence of trait psychopathy on utilitarian moral judgement. Thus, the increased tendency in psychopathy to make utilitarian moral judgements is in part due to reduced aversion to carrying out harmful actions.