Drawing the line somewhere: An experimental study of moral compromise

Alan Lewis, Alexander Bardis, Chloe Flint, Claire Mason, Natalya Smith, Charlotte Tickle and Jennifer Zinser

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2012, vol. 33, issue 4, 718-725

Abstract: In a study by Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf, and De Dreu (2011) it was convincingly demonstrated that psychologically, the distinction between right and wrong is not discrete, rather it is a continuous distribution of relative ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’. Using the ‘die-under-the-cup’ paradigm participants over-reported high numbers on the roll of a die when there were financial incentives to do so and no chance of detection for lying. Participants generally did not maximise income, instead making moral compromises. In an adaptation of this procedure in a single die experiment 9% of participants lied that they had rolled a ‘6’ when they had not compared to 2.5% in the Shalvi et al. study suggesting that when the incentive is donation to charity this encourages more dishonesty than direct personal gain. In a follow-up questionnaire study where sequences of three rolls were presented, lying increased where counterfactuals became available as predicted by Shalvi et al. A novel finding is reported where ‘justified’ lying is more common when comparative gains are higher.

Keywords: Morals; Money; Compromises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A12 D03 D6 H26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:4:p:718-725

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.01.005

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