Social Dominance Orientation Predicts Civil and Military Intelligence Analysts’ Utilitarian Responses to Ethics-of-Intelligence Dilemmas

What is the real ethical framework of an intelligence analyst? We addressed this question by presenting a group of civil and military intelligence analysts with a set of dilemmas depicting intelligence agents facing the decision about whether to violate a deontological rule where that would benefit their work. Participants judged how much violating the rule was acceptable. Next, we measured participants’ individual differences in social dominance orientation (the proclivity to endorse intergroup hierarchy and anti-egalitarianism), their deontological and utilitarian tendencies (using classical moral dilemmas), and how much they value rule conformity, traditions, and safety and stability in the society. Among these factors, only social dominance significantly helped explain variability in participants’ resolution of the ethics-of-intelligence dilemmas. Specifically, social dominance positively predicted the tendency to judge violating the deontological rule acceptable. For the first time in the open literature, we elucidated some key aspects of the real ethics of intelligence.