Saving El Gordo

By Rose Jacobs. A few years ago, a Spanish psychologist and his team of researchers asked about 700 students to decide whether they would kill one person to save five. It was a version of the classic trolley dilemma: A small train is trundling toward five people on the tracks who will perish in the crash; you see this from your perch on a footbridge and realize you can save them by shoving one of your fellow pedestrians—a fat man—off the bridge, into the train’s path. Do you do it? Only 18 percent of the students said they would, when answering in their native tongue. But when presented with the scenario in a foreign language, one in which they were proficient, the proportion of pushers jumped to 44 per cent. More...