E. J. Masicampo, a psychology professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, saw his son Nicholas playing with a train set and decided to test his moral standing.
In the video, Nicholas sat next to his wooden train track, which is split into two forks, on one side lay one toy- person, while on the other there are five toy persons. E.J. can then be heard asking his son which way the train should go, whether it should kill one life or five lives, but no-one expected the little boy to answer like he did.
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In the video, Nicholas sat next to his wooden train track, which is split into two forks, on one side lay one toy- person, while on the other there are five toy persons. E.J. can then be heard asking his son which way the train should go, whether it should kill one life or five lives, but no-one expected the little boy to answer like he did.
More photos...
The kid removed the one toy on the left rail line and put it alongside the other five toys on the right rail line. Then ran the train over all of them.
On his Youtube account, the professor captioned his post;'I'm teaching a moral psychology class this semester, and we spent part of the first day discussing the trolley problem, which is a frequently used ethical dilemma in discussions of morality. When I returned home that night and was playing trains with my son, I thought it would be interesting to see his response to the trolley problem.'
' I recorded his response so that I could share and discuss it with my class, given especially that we also will be discussing moral development from birth onward. My wife and I are constantly talking with our son about how properly to treat others -- so this has been teachable moment both for my class and for our son!'
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