Art and Moral Decision-Making: Would You Save a Human Life or the Sistine Chapel?

We devised a novel version of a sacrificial ‘trolley’ dilemma to assess how people make moral decisions about art. In an online survey, 210 undergraduates responded to 26 scenarios involving a forced choice between saving a person or saving an artwork, with characteristics of the person or the artwork varying across scenarios. Participants also provided information on their valuation of art and human life, choices in non-art-related ‘lifeboat ethics’ scenarios, difficulty answering the dilemmas, and other information. In a scenario involving saving a generic person versus the Sistine Chapel, one-sixth of participants chose to save the artwork. Modifying characteristics of the person or the artwork led to substantial shifts in choices. Propensity to choose the Sistine Chapel over a human life was predicted by similar responses to other sacrificial dilemmas (both art- and non-art-related), ratings of difficulty in answering dilemmas, and self-reported valuation of human life.