Moral Motive Selection in the Lying-Dictator Game
(2022) In Working Papers- Abstract
- An extensive literature documents that people are willing to sacrifice personal material gain to adhere to a moral motive. Yet, less is known about what happens when moral motives are in conflict. We hypothesize that individuals engage in what we term “motive selection,” namely adhering to the moral motive that aligns with their self-interest. We test this hypothesis using a laboratory experiment that induces a conflict between two of the most-studied moral motives: fairness and truth-telling. In line with our hypothesis, our results show that individuals prefer to adhere to the moral motive that is more aligned with their self-interest.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/11918045-af41-49cb-9881-64d9aecb2e27
- author
- Barron, Kai ; Stüber, Robert and van Veldhuizen, Roel LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Motivated reasoning, dictator game, lying game, motives, moral dilemmas, C91, D01, D63, D90
- in
- Working Papers
- issue
- 2022:16
- pages
- 63 pages
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 11918045-af41-49cb-9881-64d9aecb2e27
- date added to LUP
- 2022-10-04 11:34:54
- date last changed
- 2024-03-11 12:33:21
@misc{11918045-af41-49cb-9881-64d9aecb2e27, abstract = {{An extensive literature documents that people are willing to sacrifice personal material gain to adhere to a moral motive. Yet, less is known about what happens when moral motives are in conflict. We hypothesize that individuals engage in what we term “motive selection,” namely adhering to the moral motive that aligns with their self-interest. We test this hypothesis using a laboratory experiment that induces a conflict between two of the most-studied moral motives: fairness and truth-telling. In line with our hypothesis, our results show that individuals prefer to adhere to the moral motive that is more aligned with their self-interest.}}, author = {{Barron, Kai and Stüber, Robert and van Veldhuizen, Roel}}, keywords = {{Motivated reasoning; dictator game; lying game; motives; moral dilemmas; C91; D01; D63; D90}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Working Paper}}, number = {{2022:16}}, series = {{Working Papers}}, title = {{Moral Motive Selection in the Lying-Dictator Game}}, url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/173627974/WP22_16.pdf}}, year = {{2022}}, }