EAMONN FERGUSON eamonn.ferguson@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Health Psychology
Moral relativism as a disconnect between behavioural and experienced warm glow
Ferguson, Eamonn; Flynn, Niall
Authors
Niall Flynn
Abstract
We examine the robustness of warm glow preferences to changes in the choice set. Behavioural warm glow is measured using the crowded-out charity dictator game of Crumpler and Grossman (2008). In the give treatment, subjects could donate any part of their endowment to charity where their donations completely crowd out the charity's own initial endowment. In the give/take treatment, the option to take any part of the charity's endowment was added to the subjects' choice set. Experienced warm glow is measured by a series of post-decision self-reports of positive affect. Within each treatment behavioural and experienced warm glow are positively correlated, such that the more subjects donated to charity the better they claimed to feel about themselves. However, when comparing across treatments the addition of the take option results in a fall in behavioural warm glow but a rise in experienced warm glow. We interpret these results as evidence for i) a utility function increasing in both money and morality and ii) a type of moral relativism whereby the morally good action is defined in relation to the available options. This means that utility is derived from both the chosen option and from foregone opportunities, the implication of which is that the transitivity axiom becomes practically unfalsifiable.
Citation
Ferguson, E., & Flynn, N. (2016). Moral relativism as a disconnect between behavioural and experienced warm glow. Journal of Economic Psychology, 56, 163-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2016.06.002
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jun 2, 2016 |
Online Publication Date | Jun 4, 2016 |
Publication Date | Oct 1, 2016 |
Deposit Date | Jun 10, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 10, 2016 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Psychology |
Print ISSN | 0167-4870 |
Electronic ISSN | 0167-4870 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 56 |
Pages | 163-175 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2016.06.002 |
Keywords | Warm Glow, Positive Affect, Menu Dependence, Transitivity, Moral Relativism |
Public URL | https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/807895 |
Publisher URL | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487016301131 |
Additional Information | This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Moral relativism as a disconnect between behavioural and experienced warm glow; Journal Title: Journal of Economic Psychology; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2016.06.002; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. |
Files
1-s2.0-S0167487016301131-main.pdf
(562 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
Copyright information regarding this work can be found at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
You might also like
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Nottingham
Administrator e-mail: digital-library-support@nottingham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search