Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

By Neeru Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene, Max H. Bazerman. 2009

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C reveal effects of indirect agency under conditions favoring intuitive judgment, but not reflective judgment, using a joint/separate evaluation paradigm. Experiment 2A demonstrates that effects of indirect agency cannot be fully explained by perceived lack of foreknowledge or control on the part of the primary agent. Experiment 2B indicates that reflective moral judgment is sensitive to indirect agency, but only to the extent that indirectness signals reduced foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 3 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of agents who cause harm indirectly. Experiment 4 demonstrates an effect of indirect agency on purchase intentions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Information Systems and Management, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/192175f95f03f0c6eb387b2c93ef1bf1d1ee9f99

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Citations in the corpus

Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality (2012, background): “In one study with a real-life analogue, people judged a drug company to be less blameworthy when it increased the price of an important drug through an intermediate company than when it did so directly (Paharia, Kassam, Greene, & Bazerman, 2009 ).”
Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically (2016, background): “…desirable, on the other hand, purchase interest increased hand in hand with justifications for that increased interest, evidenced by greater agreement with sentiments such as “sweatshops are the only realistic source of income for workers in poorer countries” (Paharia, Vohs, and Deshpandé 2013).”
Intermediation Reduces Punishment (and Reward) (2011, background): “Paharia et al (2009) also show that subjects who read hypothetical scenarios rate firms as less immoral if the firms act selfishly when outsourcing.”
Understanding ordinary unethical behavior: why people who value morality act immorally (2015, unknown): “Similarly, people are more likely to ignore the unethical behavior of others when their behavior degrades slowly rather than in one abrupt shift [36] or in the presence of intermediaries [37].”
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty (2012, background): “As Paharia et al. (2009) predicted, participants judged Action A more harshly than those who read Action B, despite the smaller negative impact of Action A on patients.”