Strategic Ignorance and the Robustness of Social Preferences

Participants in dictator games frequently avoid learning whether their choice to maximize their own earnings will help or hurt the recipient and then choose selfishly, exploiting the “moral wiggle room” provided by their ignorance. However, this is found in an environment in which the dictator must...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inManagement science Vol. 60; no. 11; pp. 2659 - 2665
Main Author Grossman, Zachary
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Linthicum INFORMS 01.11.2014
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Subjects
Analysis
Anti-social behaviour
Behavior
Behavioral economics
Behavioral psychology
Computer terminals
default effects
dictator games
Dictators
Earnings
Educational outcomes
Experiments
Fairness
Game theory
Games
Ignorance
Learning
Management science
moral wiggle room
Pay-off
Personal preferences (Social sciences)
Preferences
Prosocial behavior
Psychological factors
Psychology
Self image
self-deception
self-signaling
Set (Psychology)
Social aspects
Social behavior
Social interaction
social preferences
status quo bias
strategic ignorance
Studies
U.S.A
United States
United States > US
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Summary:Participants in dictator games frequently avoid learning whether their choice to maximize their own earnings will help or hurt the recipient and then choose selfishly, exploiting the “moral wiggle room” provided by their ignorance. However, this is found in an environment in which the dictator must actively learn the true payoffs, so inaction means ignorance. Does this effect persist when one must actively choose either to be ignorant or to be informed or when one must actively choose to remain ignorant? In fact, whereas 45% of dictators remain ignorant when one must click to become informed, this drops to 25% when one must click in either case and to 3% when one must click to remain ignorant. Although the exploitation of moral wiggle room is not merely an artifact, it is, much like social behavior itself, subject to environmental and psychological factors that may reinforce or undermine its impact. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1989 . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics .
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ISSN:0025-1909
1526-5501
DOI:10.1287/mnsc.2014.1989