Inaction and Decision Making in Moral Conflicts

People regularly face conflicts in which obeying one moral requirement means transgressing another. Moral conflicts require difficult decisions: a person believes she should take both actions, but doing both is impossible. In this paper, we examine a common form of decision-making for those facing moral conflicts: inaction. Instead of taking any action, people too often respond with procrastination, indecision, avoidance, and evasion.