Social preferences or sacred values? Theroy and evidence of deontological motivations

Daniel L. Chen () and Martin Schonger
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Daniel L. Chen: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Martin Schonger: Center for Law and Economics, ETH Zürich,Switzerland.

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Abstract: Recent advances in economic theory, largely motivated by experimental findings, have led to the adoption of models of human behavior where a decision-maker not only takes into consideration her own payoff but also others' payoffs and any potential consequences of these payoffs. Investigations of deontological motivations, where a decision-maker makes her choice not only based on the consequences of a decision but also the decision per se have been rare. We propose an experimental method that can detect an individual's deontological motivations by varying the probability of the decision-maker's decision having consequences. It uses two states of the world, one where the decision has consequences and one where it has none. We show that a purely consequentialist decision-maker whose preferences satisfy first-order stochastic dominance will choose the decision that leads to the best consequences regardless of the probability of the consequential state. A purely deontological decision-maker is also invariant to the probability. However, a mixed consequentialist-deontological decision-maker's choice changes with the probability. The direction of change gives insight into the location of the optimand for one's duty. We provide a formal interpretation of major moral philosophies and a revealed preference method to detect deontological motivations and discuss the relevance of the theory and method for economics and law.

Keywords: Consequentialism; Deontological motivations; Normative commitments; Social preferences; Revealed preference; Decision theory; First order stochastic dominance; Random lottery incentive method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09-16
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