Article title: Moral conformity in online interactions: rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral judgments.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510.2017.1323007

This article examines online conformity to ethical dilemmas and does so by examining two different experiments on this matter. The first experiment investigated two different ethical dilemmas involving violations of harm vs. violations of purity. Participants were placed into two different groups in which one read a scenario that involved passengers of a sinking lifeboat that sacrifice an overweight, injured passenger in the other scenario involves a situation in which a family ate their dead pet dog. Then, they were asked to rate how condemnable the actions of those in the dilemma were. Participants were polled twice. Each time they were polled they were shown a statistical number on how others rated the dilemma. Ratings were based on 11-point Likert scale ranging "from 0 (completely morally acceptable) to 10 (completely morally condemnable)." The second experiment replicated the first except for participants in this experiment were not only shown manipulated statistical measures of how others rated the scenario but each rating also had either a rational argument or an emotionally charged argument along with the ratings. Participants fell into one of four conditions, (condemnable vs. acceptable) and (emotional versus rational).

What are the independent variables?

what were some of the factors and their levels?