Conscience accounting: emotional dynamics and social behaviour

Kristóf Madarász, Uri Gneezy and Alex Imas

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We develop a simple dynamic model of decision making in the presence of moral constraints. Norm violations induce a temporal feeling of guilt that depreciates with time. Due to endogenous fluctuations of guilt, people exhibit a dynamic inconsistency in social preferences—a behavior we term conscience accounting. We test the predictions of the model through two experiments in which people first have to make an ethical decision, and subsequently decide whether to donate to charity. We find that those who chose unethically were more likely to donate than those who did not. As predicted, donation rates were higher when the opportunity to donate came sooner after the unethical choice than later. Combined, our theoretical and empirical findings suggest a mechanism by which prosocial behavior is likely to occur within temporal brackets following an unethical choice.

Keywords: emotions; temporal brackets; deception; prosocial behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 D6 D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2012-02-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/47994/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Conscience Accounting: Emotional Dynamics and Social Behavior (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:47994

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