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Cruel to be kind but not cruel for cash : harm aversion in the dictator game
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Perera, Pri, Canic, Emina and Ludvig, Elliot Andrew (2016) Cruel to be kind but not cruel for cash : harm aversion in the dictator game. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 23 (3). pp. 893-898. doi:10.3758/s13423-015-0959-4 ISSN 1069-9384.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0959-4
Abstract
People regularly take prosocial actions, making individual sacrifices for the greater good. Similarly, people generally avoid causing harm to others. These twin desires to do good and avoid harm often align, but sometimes they can diverge, creating situations of moral conflict. Here, we examined this moral conflict using a modified dictator game. Participants chose how much money to allocate away from a recipient who was designated as an orphan, creating a sense of harm. This money was then reallocated to either the participant or a charity. People were strongly prosocial: they allocated more money away from the orphan for charity than for themselves. Furthermore, people left more money with the orphan when the harm was framed as a means (taking) than as a side effect (splitting). As is predicted by dual-process theories of moral decision making, response times were longer with the take action and were positively correlated with the amount taken from the orphan. We concluded that just as people take positive actions for the greater good, they are similarly more willing to cause harm when it benefits others rather than themselves.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Decision making -- Moral and ethical aspects | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Psychonomic Bulletin & Review | ||||||||
Publisher: | Psychonomic Society | ||||||||
ISSN: | 1069-9384 | ||||||||
Official Date: | June 2016 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 23 | ||||||||
Number: | 3 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 893-898 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.3758/s13423-015-0959-4 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 31 December 2015 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 14 October 2016 |
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