Cruel to be kind but not cruel for cash: Harm aversion in the dictator game

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 can sometimes 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 re-allocated 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 predicted by dualprocess theories of moral decision making, response times were longer with the take action and positively correlated with the amount taken from the orphan. We conclude 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.

Anti-social motives explain increased risk aversion for others in decisions from experience

“…Irrespective of the direction of change in risk taking, the differences in choices for self and others are usually attributed to prosocial attitudes, assuming that people choose what they think would be best for the other person. This supposed ubiquitous prosociality conforms with the hyperaltruism observed when people are faced with causing harm to others (Crockett et al, 2014;Perera et al, 2016), but conflicts with findings that people also have a competitive streak, such as when people are happier when their income exceeds that of those around them (e.g., Clark & Oswald, 1996) or even an anti-social streak, such as when they do not contribute to a public good even though it is in their self-interest to do so (Brandts, Saijo & Schram, 2004;Saijo, 2008). This occasional anti-social behavior in social comparison suggests that differences in risk taking for self and other could also be due to anti-social motives.…”

Developing a sentence level fairness metric using word embeddings

“… The benefit-harm gained: A measure of how the actors actions will result in a benefit to the receiver or lack thereof (Brañas-Garza et al, 2014 ; Bruner & Kopec, 2018 ; Chiaravutthi, 2019 ; Perera et al, 2016 ). The consideration of wider public benefit and harm (Gillet et al, 2009 ; Lejano & Ingram, 2012 ; Sigmund et al, 2001 ).…”

“…The benefit-harm gained: A measure of how the actors actions will result in a benefit to the receiver or lack thereof (Brañas-Garza et al, 2014 ; Bruner & Kopec, 2018 ; Chiaravutthi, 2019 ; Perera et al, 2016 ).…”

“…The wording of the sentences were induced from each of the above numbered lists under the Contingent Factors . Thus, the two opposite terms of benefit-harm (Brañas-Garza et al, 2014 ; Bruner & Kopec, 2018 ; Chiaravutthi, 2019 ; Perera et al, 2016 ) were constructed into: . In considering the wider public benefit-harm (Gillet et al, 2009 ; Lejano & Ingram, 2012 ; Sigmund et al, 2001 ), we constructed: .…”