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Moral judgments, gender, and antisocial preferences: an experimental study

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Abstract

We study questionnaire responses to situations in which sacrificing one life may save many other lives. We demonstrate gender differences in moral judgments: males are more supportive of the sacrifice than females. We investigate a source of the endorsement of the sacrifice: antisocial preferences. First, we measure individual proneness to spiteful behavior, using an experimental game with monetary stakes. We demonstrate that spitefulness can be sizable—a fifth of our participants behave spitefully—but it is not associated with gender. Second, we find that gender is consistently associated with responses even when we account for individual differences in the propensity to spitefulness.

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Notes

  1. Some experimenters have also investigated incentivized moral dilemmas in which people’s decisions bear real material consequences, see Hsu et al. (2008) and Gold et al. (2014, 2015). For instance, Gold et al. (2014) look at a version of a moral dilemma in which the harm is a small economic loss. The authors find some differences between actions and judgments, yet conclude that nothing definitive can be said about their scope and causes.

  2. On the other hand, a replication study by Seyedsayamdost (2015) and studies of Gold et al. (2014, 2015) report no systematic gender difference in moral judgments.

  3. Charness and Grosskopf (2001) have conducted an experiment with games that are similar to our game. Their design focuses on the association between self-reported happiness and one’s concern for relative payoffs. They find little association; most participants disregarded relative payoffs and instead typically made choices resulting in higher social payoff. Another related game is the envy game (Bartling et al. 2009). However, the envy game allows for enforcement of an egalitarian outcome, whereas our spite game allows for enforcement of an unequal allocation. We suspect that individuals who are spiteful are envious as well.

  4. For richer taxonomies of other-regarding preferences in the laboratory, see Fisman et al. (2007), Murphy et al. (2011), and Kerschbamer (2015).

  5. Interestingly, Levine also notes (p. 616): Finally, we turn to other implications of the theory that could be tested in future experiments. For example, there is a set of implications of the theory for one-player games that has not been examined experimentally: the theory predicts that spiteful play should take place, even in a one-player setting. In other words, if a single player is given the option to deprive an opponent of money at a sufficiently modest cost to himself, then we should observe 20% or more of players availing themselves of this option. Our experiment can be viewed as a direct out-of-the-sample test of this conjecture. In the light of our data, the 20% rate of spiteful behavior conjectured by Levine looks highly accurate.

  6. Zizzo and Oswald (2001) find an even larger fraction of spiteful behavior. In their experiment, participants may pay to ’burn’ the money of the bigger earners. Together with a similar experiment Zizzo (2004) in which players also have a chance to steal money from others, these results suggest that one could manipulate the amount of spitefulness if the other player is given a larger endowment than the decision maker, see also Abbink et al. (2018) for related evidence. In addition, Abbink and Sadrieh (2009) and Abbink and Herrmann (2011) study the joy-of-destruction game and find that people do not use the opportunity to destroy others’ wealth when they are observed by their potential victims (which might expose them to a direct retaliation), but people do so if such behavior can be concealed behind a veil of random destruction. Indeed, Abbink and Sadrieh (2009) find that the frequency of a spiteful act increases from less than 10% in the "open" treatment to almost 40% in the "hidden" treatment and the destroyed amounts differ considerably between the two conditions as well. In another study, Nishimura et al. (2011) build on an auction model in which spiteful low-value types may overbid so as to reduce the high-value types’ gains, and confirm the presence of such an aggressive behavior in the laboratory (similar results are also provided by Kimbrough and Reiss 2012).

  7. Hypothesis 2 is also corroborated by the findings in Croson and Gneezy (2009) and Engel (2011). Croson and Gneezy (2009) review the literature on gender differences in other-regarding preferences, and conclude that females are more sensitive to social cues in determining appropriate behavior. In a meta-analysis of dictator game experiments, Engel (2011) reports that females act more prosocially, i.e., give significantly more than males. Note, however, that the dictator game is well-suited for capturing prosocial behavior (sharing with others), but is silent on why people do not share with others: both selfishness and spitefulness preferences predict to the same behavior. Our spite game is a way to tease apart selfishness from antisocial preferences.

  8. Petrinovich and O’Neill (1996), Alexander and Weinberg (2007), and Zamzow and Nichols (2009) show that the order of presentation affects moral responses.

  9. The references for the dilemmas are: Submarine (Greene et al. 2001), Trespassers (Greene et al. 2001), Hostages (Greene et al. 2001), Bystander (Foot 1967), Life Raft (Regan 1983), Plane Crash (Marshall 1993, Greene et al. 2001), Prisoners of War (Baron 1992), Fumes (Thomson 1986), Spelunkers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4954856.stm), Surgery (Foot 1967), Derailment (Unger 1996), Footbridge (Thomson 1985), and Baby (Alda et al. 1983; Greene et al. 2001).

  10. We used this procedure to collect data on each participant’s game decision. Note that our procedure makes it plain that each participant’s choice could affect another participant’s payoff. Our procedure asks participants to make contingent choices before learning about their actual role in the game (Selten 1967). An alternative procedure could have first let each participant know her role in the game ex ante, and then ask the participant to make choices at her actual information set. The literature shows that both methods yield similar results with simple distributional games that involve very few contingent choices (for the dictator game, see Cason and Mui 1998; for the solidarity game, see Büchner et al. 2007). For a survey of further experimental evidence on the two methods, see Brandts and Charness (2011).

  11. Tavakol and Dennick (2011) describe internal consistency as the extent to which all the items in a test measure the same concept. Internal consistency is connected to the inter-relatedness of the items within the test (p. 53). Commonly, values of at least 0.7 are considered as acceptable (p. 54).

  12. Those contextual fixed effects turn out to be important controls in the model: their joint insignificance is strongly rejected with \(p<0.001\).

  13. As noted by Vossler (2013), this technique allows for valid inference in a regression model for any form of unobserved within-unit (here, at the individual level) serial correlation.

  14. These results should be interpreted as associations. Like some studies before, we are interested in whether and how antisocial preferences may predict moral judgments. We thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

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Correspondence to Adam Zylbersztejn.

Additional information

We thank an associate editor and two anonymous referees for helping us improve the paper. This research has been supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), through the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-10–LABX_93-01). The research has been performed within the framework of LABEX CORTEX (ANR-11-LABX-0042) of Universite de Lyon, within the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-11-IDEX-007) run by the French National Research Agency (ANR). Maxim Frolov, Ivan Ouss, and Rémi Yin assisted with the experimental sessions. We thank Daniel Bartels, Astrid Hopfensitz, Michal Krawczyk, Hela Maafi, David Masclet, Ernesto Reuben, seminar participants at the University of Crete and the University of Paris 8, at the GATE CNRS in Lyon, and at the 2015 ASFEE meeting in Paris for valuable comments. Adam Zylbersztejn is grateful to the University of Lyon 2 for support through ASPRE 2015 and AIP 2016.

Appendix: Design and instructions

Appendix: Design and instructions

In each session, participants were asked to answer a standard questionnaire. We used the questionnaire to elicit demographic information. In addition, participants were required both to play an experimental game and to answer a moral judgment questionnaire. Below, we present the paper instructions (subsection 1), describe the instructions displayed on the participants’ computer screens (subsection 2), and present the moral judgment questionnaire (subsection 3). Sentences in brackets were not part of the instructions but rather descriptions of what happened.

1.1 Instructions on paper

You are taking part in an experiment in which you can earn money. Your gains may depend on the decision made by another participant. Before we begin, we would like you to answer a few standard questions concerning your age, education, profession, etc. These questions will help us to get to learn something about your characteristics. Your identity and your monetary gains will remain confidential and anonymous.

[Participants filled out the standard questionnaire.]

Thank you for answering the questions.

What happens in the Session

The experiment consists of two separate parts. In Part 1, your payment in the session will be determined. In Part 2, you will be asked to answer questions that will allow us to learn more about you. Further instructions will be displayed on your screen before the beginning of each part.

Payment of your earnings

Your total payment will the payoff you earn in Part 1 and a bonus of 5 Euros for completing the session. Payments are made individually and in cash.

You are not allowed to talk during the experiment. Participants who violate this rule will be excluded from the experiment and payments. It is important that you perfectly understand the rules of this experiment. Should you have any questions, please raise your hand.

Thank you again for your participation.

1.2 Computer screen

1.2.1 [Experimental game: information on the first screen]

In this part of the experiment, your additional payment will be determined. The game has two players: player A and player B. Only player A makes a decision, and this decision affects player B’s payoff only. You will be paired randomly with another participant. You will then be asked about the decision you would make as player A. Finally, at the end of the experiment, a random draw will determine your actual role in the pair. If you are player A, your decision will determine the other group member’s payoff. If you are player B, your payoff will be determined by player A.

1.2.2 [Experimental game: information on the second screen]

The game is played by two persons, player A and player B, and runs as follows. Player A’s payoff is fixed and equals 10 Euros. Player A decides about player B’s payoff. More precisely, player A selects an amount between 0 and 10 Euros which is then attributed to player B. Player A’s choice does not affect her own payoff. Player B makes no decision and her payoff corresponds to the amount determined by player A.

Suppose that you are player A. What amount would you like to give to player B?

[Participants entered amount using the computer’s keyboard.]

1.3 Moral judgment questionnaire

In this part of the session, we ask you to answer a few questions. The answers will enable us to learn about some of your personal characteristics. We remind you that we are not able to link your answers with your identity.

[Participants used a computer mouse to tick the appropriate box on a scale of\(-2,\ -1,\ 1,\ 2\). The leftmost box represents the strongest disagreement and the rightmost box corresponds to the highest agreement.

1.3.1 1. Submarine

You are the captain of a small military submarine traveling underneath a large iceberg. An on-board explosion has dramatically decreased the oxygen supply and has injured a member of the crew. He may die from his injuries. The remaining oxygen is not sufficient for the entire six-man crew to make it to the surface. If you shoot the injured crew member, there will be just enough oxygen for everyone else to survive.

In this situation, would you shoot the crew member?

1.3.2 2. Trespassers

You and a group of friends are backpacking, and while crossing a rocky plain in the Guatemalan highlands, you inadvertently camp on a local clan’s burial ground. The leader of the clan says that his clan’s laws command him to kill all six of you as a sacrifice to the gods, but that if you kill one of your own, the gods will be appeased, and the rest will be let go.

In this situation, would you kill one of your friends?

1.3.3 3. Hostages

You are traveling with five other peace advocates in a war-torn country when your group is taken hostage by a group of terrorists. After a week, the terrorists’ demands have not been met, and they offer you a choice: either they will kill all of you, or if you execute one of your fellow hostages, you and the others will be free to go.

In this situation, would you execute one of your fellow hostages?

1.3.4 4. Bystander

In the path of a runaway train car are five railway workmen who will surely be killed unless you, a bystander, do something. If you flip a switch, the train will be diverted onto another track, where it will kill a single railway workman.

In this situation, would you flip the switch?

1.3.5 5. Life raft

You are on a small ship, a fire breaks out, and the ship has to be abandoned. Because your tiny life raft is carrying more than its capacity, it is sitting dangerously low in the water. The seas get rough and the raft begins to fill with water. Unless you do something, all six of you will drown. There is an injured person on board who may die either way. If you throw him overboard, everyone else will be saved.

In this situation, would you throw him overboard?

1.3.6 6. Plane crash

Your plane has crashed in the Himalayas. The only survivors are you, some other men, and a young boy. The six of you travel for days, battling extreme cold and wind. Your only chance of survival is to make it to a village a few days away. The boy cannot move very quickly. Without food, you and the other men will surely die. One of the men suggests killing the boy and eating his remains over the next few days.

In this situation, would you sacrifice the boy?

1.3.7 7. Prisoners of war

You and some other soldiers were captured. After a year in a prison camp, your group tried to escape but was caught. The warden has decided to hang your group in front of the other prisoners of war. At the gallows, he releases the noose from your neck and announces that if you pull the chair from underneath one man in your group, the remaining five will be set free; otherwise, you all die. He means what he says.

In this situation, would you remove the chair?

1.3.8 8. Fumes

You are the late-night watchman in a hospital, where an accident has occurred in one of the on-site testing labs, and now, there are deadly fumes rising up through the hospital’s ventilation system. The fumes are headed to a certain area, where there are five patients who will surely die. If you flip a switch, the ventilation system will cause the fumes to bypass this room and enter a room containing a single patient, killing him.

In this situation, would you flip the switch?

1.3.9 9. Spelunkers

You and five others are exploring a seashore cave. A rock falls and blocks your exit. The tide is rising. You spot a hole elsewhere and let a large man in your group out first. He gets stuck, and unless you get out soon, everyone but this man (whose head is sticking out of the cave) will drown. You have a stick of dynamite that will not move the rock, but will blast the man out of the hole. He does not want to die; neither do you or the others.

In this situation, would you blast him out?

1.3.10 10. Soldiers

You are leading a group of soldiers returning from a completed mission in enemy territory when one of your men steps in a trap. He is injured, and the trap is connected to a device that alerts the enemy to your presence. If the enemy finds your group, all six of you will die. If you leave him behind, he will be killed, but the rest of the group will escape safely.

In this situation, would you leave him behind?

1.3.11 11. Surgery

You are a surgeon with a number of patients. Five of them need organ transplants. Each of them needs a different organ or they will surely die. You have another patient who is healthy and would be an ideal organ donor for the others. If you transplant his organs (against his will) into the bodies of the other patients, they will live but he will die.

In this situation, would you perform this transplant?

1.3.12 12. Derailment

In the path of a runaway train car are five railway workmen who will surely be killed unless you, a bystander, do something. If you flip a switch, the train will be diverted onto a set of tracks in need of repair. The train will be derailed and go down a hill, across a road, and into a man’s yard. The owner, sleeping in his hammock, will be killed.

In this situation, would you flip the switch?

1.3.13 13. Footbridge

In the path of a runaway train car are five railway workmen who will surely be killed unless you, a bystander, do something. You are standing next to a larger stranger on a pedestrian walkway that arches over the tracks. Your body would be too light to stop the train, but if you push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him, his large body will stop the train.

In this situation, would you push the man?

1.3.14 14. Baby

Enemy soldiers have taken over your village and will kill all remaining civilians. You and five others are hiding in the cellar of a large house. Soldiers have come to search the house for valuables. A baby in your group begins to cry. Therefore, you cover her mouth, but she cannot breathe. If you remove your hand, the baby can breathe, but her crying will summon the soldiers who will kill everyone in the cellar.

In this situation, would you smother the baby?

[Participants were thanked for their participation and paid in private.]

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Bracht, J., Zylbersztejn, A. Moral judgments, gender, and antisocial preferences: an experimental study. Theory Decis 85, 389–406 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-018-9668-6

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