Self-serving interpretations of ambiguity in other-regarding behavior

Haisley, Emily; Weber, Roberto A.

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2009.08.002

Cited by 186 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…For example, Haisley and Weber (2010) presented participants with two options. An "other-regarding" option yielded payoffs for the decision maker and for a passive recipient that were relatively equal, for example, $2.00 and $1.75, respectively.…”

Section: Figure 3 Distributions Of Reported Die Rollsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically

Gino¹,

Norton²,

Weber

2016

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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185

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Research yields ample evidence that individual's behavior often reflects an apparent concern for moral considerations. A natural way to interpret evidence of such motives using an economic framework is to add an argument to the utility function such that agents obtain utility both from outcomes that yield only personal benefits and from acting kindly, honestly, or according to some other notion of “right.” Indeed, such interpretations can account for much of the existing empirical evidence. However, a growing body of research at the intersection of psychology and economics produces findings inconsistent with such straightforward, preference-based interpretations for moral behavior. In particular, while people are often willing to take a moral act that imposes personal material costs when confronted with a clear-cut choice between “right” and “wrong,” such decisions often seem to be dramatically influenced by the specific contexts in which they occur. In particular, when the context provides sufficient flexibility to allow plausible justification that one can both act egoistically while remaining moral, people seize on such opportunities to prioritize self-interest at the expense of morality. In other words, people who appear to exhibit a preference for being moral may in fact be placing a value on feeling moral, often accomplishing this goal by manipulating the manner in which they process information to justify taking egoistic actions while maintaining this feeling of morality.

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Section: Figure 3 Distributions Of Reported Die Rollsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically

Gino¹,

Norton²,

Weber

2016

Journal of Economic Perspectives

Self Cite

185

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“…As discussed, this is consistent with givers being not only concerned with ex-ante fairness but also taking ex-post fairness considerations into account. An alternative interpretation is suggested by the observations of Haisley and Weber (2010), who find that generosity decreases in environments where self-serving interpretations of fairness are available for the decision maker (see also Broberg et al 2007;Dana et al 2007). Thus, givers may behave less generously when allocations for beneficiaries are riskier by focusing on the beneficiaries' high possible outcome and ignoring the low one.…”

Section: Ex-ante and Ex-post Fairness Riskiness And Risk Aversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Giving in the face of risk

2017

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Decisions about how to share resources with others often need to be taken under uncertainty regarding its allocational consequences. Although risk preferences are likely important, existing research is silent about how social and risk preferences interact in such situations. In this paper we provide experimental evidence on this question. In a first experiment givers are not exposed to risk while beneficiaries' final earnings may be larger or smaller than the allocation itself, depending on the realized state of the world. In a second experiment, risk affects the earnings of givers but not of beneficiaries. We find that individuals' risk preferences are predictive for giving inThe research documented in this paper was partly financed by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (project number 11429) and also received financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (project number 400-09-451). Uncertain (2017) 55:95-118 both experiments. Increased risk exposure of beneficiaries tends to decrease giving whereas increased risk exposure of givers has no effect. We propose a simple nonlinear generalization of a model allowing for other-regarding preferences, ex-post and ex-ante fairness, and risk aversion. We find some support for it in our data when risk is on the beneficiaries' side but less so when risk is on the givers' side. Our results point to the importance of the further development of models of social preferences that also incorporate risk preferences. Electronic supplementary material

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“…3 By studying the replacement excuse, our paper is related to a recent strand of papers on excuse driven behavior. The literature documents, for instance, that people employ self-serving interpretations of ambiguity and risk (Haisley andWeber 2010, Exley 2015), avoid information and exposure to sharing opportunities (Dana et al 2006(Dana et al , 2007Lazear et al 2012, Andreoni et al 2016, or use time to develop own excuses (Exley and Petrie 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Limits to Moral Erosion in Markets: Social Norms and the Replacement Excuse

Bartling¹,

zdemir²

2017

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper studies the impact of a key feature of competitive markets on moral behavior: the possibility that a competitor will step in and conclude the deal if a conscientious market actor forgoes a profitable business opportunity for ethical reasons. We study experimentally whether people employ the argument "if I don't do it, someone else will" to justify taking a narrowly self-interested action. Our data reveal a clear pattern. Subjects do not employ the "replacement excuse" if a social norm exists that classifies the selfish action as immoral. But if no social norm exists, subjects are more inclined to take a selfish action in situations where another subject can otherwise take it. By demonstrating the importance of social norms of moral behavior for limiting the power of the replacement excuse, our paper informs the long-standing debate on the effect of markets on morals. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Codes: C920, D020, D630.Keywords: replacement excuse, social norms, moral behavior, competition, markets, utilitarianism, deontological ethics. Björn

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Self-serving interpretations of ambiguity in other-regarding behavior

Cited by 186 publications

References 47 publications

Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically

Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically

Giving in the face of risk

The Limits to Moral Erosion in Markets: Social Norms and the Replacement Excuse

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