Moral awareness polarizes people's fairness judgments

Michael Kurschilgen

Munich Papers in Political Economy from Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich

Abstract: How does moral awareness affect people's fairness judgments? Models of identity utility predict that if individuals differ in their personal fairness ideals (equality versus effciency), higher moral awareness should not only make people's choices less selfish but also more polarized. On the other hand, people's desire for conforming with the behavior of their peers should help mitigate polarization. I test these conjectures in a laboratory experiment, in which participants can pursue different fairness ideals. I exogenously vary (i) whether participants are prompted to state their moral opinions behind the veil of ignorance, and (ii) whether they are informed about the behavior of their peers. I find that moral introspection makes choices more polarized, reflecting even more divergent moral opinions. The increase in polarization coincides largely with a widening of revealed gender differences as introspection makes men's choices more welfarist and women's more egalitarian. Disclosing the descriptive norm of the situation is not capable of mitigating the polarization.

Keywords: Moral Introspection; Social Information; Identity; Normative Ambivalence; Equality; Efficiency; Polarization; Experiment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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Journal Article: Moral awareness polarizes people’s fairness judgments (2023)
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