Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness

By Jason Dana, Roberto A. Weber, J. Kuang. 2007

1,402 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper explores whether generosity in experiments is truly evidence of concern for desirable social outcomes. We conduct an experiment using a binary version of the dictator game. We introduce several treatments in which subjects are able to leave the relationship between their actions and resulting outcomes uncertain, either to themselves or to another subject influenced by those actions, thus giving subjects the moral “wiggle room” to behave self-interestedly. We find significantly less generous behavior in these manipulations, relative to a baseline in which the relationship between actions and outcomes is transparent. We conclude that many subjects behave fairly in the baseline case mainly because they intrinsically dislike appearing unfair, either to themselves or others.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff07dd57b1d3c5e4897e8c270b3a82e68a62caea

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Citations in the corpus

Behavioral Environmental Economics: Promises and Challenges (2014, background): “For instance, Dana et al. (2007) show that when subjects are given the opportunity to know whether their actions are going to benefit or hurt others, they may take advantage of a " moral wriggle room " in order to make self‐interested choices.”
Do Markets Erode Social Responsibility (2015, background): “Research on social concern in nonmarket environments shows that many people exploit default informational states to act self-interestedly (Dana et al. 2007).”
Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior (2011, positive): “2010) and avoiding information that may tarnish their self-image (Dana et al. 2007).”
The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance (2008, neutral): “In summary, this standard external cost–benefit perspective generates three hypotheses as to the forces that are expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of dishonesty: higher magnitude of external rewards (Ext-H1), lower probability of being caught (Ext-H2), and lower magnitude of…”
The power of asking: How communication affects selfishness, empathy, and altruism (2011, background): “…of recent attention in the literature: concerns for social-image (Andreoni and Bernheim, 2009; Tadelis et al., 2008; Ariely et al., 2009), self-image and self-signaling (Bodner and Prelec, 2003; Dana et al., 2007) and guilt aversion (Charness and Dufwenberg, 2006; Battigalli and Dufwenberg, 2007).”
Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger: How Moral Decoupling Enables Consumers to Admire and Admonish (2013, result): “This view is consistent with past research: while rationalization exploits the ambiguity around certain immoral behaviors (e.g. Dana et al. 2007; Mazar et al. 2008; Shu et al. 2011), decoupling exploits the ambiguity inherent in the placement of the bounds of performance.”
The external validity of giving in the dictator game (2012, background): “…from other studies demonstrates that standard double blind procedures render less anonymity than methods with a random mechanism such as the randomized response technique (Franzen and Pointner 2012) or decision concealment by using a chance mechanism (Dana et al. 2007; Andreoni and Bernheim 2009).”
Self-signaling and social-signaling in giving (2015, background): “10 This formalizes the observation of Dana et al. (2007) that obscuring the link between actions and their consequences (in terms of beliefs) diminishes fair behavior.”
Dictating the Risk: Experimental Evidence on Giving in Risky Environments (2013, result): “However, the observations that giving in T2 and T3 is less than in the standard dictator game is also in line with findings by Dana et al. (2007): since the potential payoffs to the recipient do not depend on the dictator's choice, the dictator can exploit the " moral-wiggle room " .”