Moral Distance and Moral Motivations in Dictator Games

Fernando Aguiar (), Pablo Brañas-Garza and Luis Miller
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Fernando Aguiar: IESA-CSIC

No 2007-047, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: We perform an experimenta linvestigation using a dictator game in which individuals must make a moral decision - to give or not to give an amount of money to poor people in the Third World. A questionnaire in which the subjects are asked about the reasons for their decision shows that, at least in this case, moral motivations carry a heavy weight in the decision: the majority of dictators give the money for reasons of a consequentialist nature. Based on the results presented here and of other analogous experiments, we conclude that dicator behavior can be understood in terms of moral distance rather than social distance and that it systematically deviates from the egoism assumption in economic models and game theory.

Keywords: Keywords: Dictator game; moral distance; moral motivations; experimental economics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2007-047

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