Moral Motive Selection in the Lying-Dictator Game

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 9911

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡
• Subject: motivated reasoning ; dictator game ; lying game ; motives ; moral dilemmas

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Barron, Kai ; Stüber, Robert ; van Veldhuizen, Roel
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/265946
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET