Moral distance in dictator games
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Society for Judgment and Decision Making
Materia
Dictator game Moral distance Moral motivations Experimental economics
Fecha
2008Referencia bibliográfica
Aguiar, F.; Brañas-Garza, P.; Miller, L.M. Moral distance in dictator games. Judgment and Decision Making, 3(4): 344-354 (2008). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/32918]
Resumen
We perform an experimental investigation 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.