Pleasures of Skill and Moral Conduct

Armin Falk and Nora Szech

No 5732, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper provides controlled experimental evidence that striving for pleasures of skill can have negative moral consequences and causally reduce moral values. Subjects perform an IQ-test. They know that each correctly solved question increases the likelihood of moral transgression. In terms of self-image, this creates a trade-off between signaling excellence and immoral disposition. We contrast performance in the IQ-test to test scores in an otherwise identical test, which is, however, framed as a simple questionnaire. We find that subjects perform significantly better in the IQ-test condition, and become less willing to reduce test scores in order to act morally.

JEL-codes: C91 D02 D62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5732.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Pleasures of skill and moral conduct (2016)
Working Paper: Pleasures of skill and moral conduct (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5732

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().