disgust score - 2 out of 5
empathy score - 3 out of 5
morality score - 4 out of 7. There were a lot of factors involved in how justifiable I thought the utilitarian sacrifice in each question was, but the main one was whether the death of the sacrificed person was inevitable anyway. (For example, throwing the gravely injured person out of the boat to keep it from sinking is far more justifiable than throwing the bystander onto the tracks to stop the train).
I think my answers were influenced by the fact that both potential outcomes were given to me point blank whereas in real life, there would be a chance that I could take the means-to-the-ends approach and still have everything turn out good. This told me what would happen either way so it was just a matter of picking the less of two evils.
This. Real life is nothing like that. In real life all you have are your predictions of what's going to happen, and in most situations I would not be confident enough in my ability to foresee outcomes to choose to sacrifice someone's life based on it. (What if the sacrifice doesn't actually end up preventing any more deaths? What if there's a turn of events that saves everybody and the sacrifice would have been unnecessary anyway? etc.) Also, most real life situations are far more open-ended than the clear-cut either/or dilemmas on the test, and it's sometimes possible to find another way out that gives everyone a decent chance of survival without having to use someone as means to an end. (Though I also recognize there
are circumstances where this isn't realistically possible, where your potential choices are very limited or there simply isn't enough time to find a better way.)
When shit goes down and we are put into kill or be killed, we all have the capacity to make "terrible" choices. It then comes down to who you know, who you have loyalties and ties with and that becomes instinctive. Most of the time, it's split second decisions that cannot be thought over twice. Moral "dilemmas" are Monday morning quarterbacking.
Or, less idealistically, this. As much as I’d like to think I would calmly reason my way to the fairest and most morally sound (or least morally repugnant) choice, and then actually have the courage to act on it, it's likely I would react primarily on emotion and instinct. Most people tend to overestimate how calmly, bravely and nobly they would act in life-or-death situations, and many would rather harshly judge people who have behaved less-than-optimally in such situations as stupid, cowardly, or selfish rather than consider how they might have acted the same.