Licence to lie and the social (In)appropriateness of lying

Serdarevic, Nina

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109716

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…6 But what is the natural and proper object of praise and blame in oneplayer games? In the dice-rolling game, subjects who are misreporting in order to receive more money are violating a relatively clearly defined norm; the shared perception that honesty is the most appropriate action (Lois and Wessa 2021;Serdarevic 2021). By eliciting norms in the receiver game, however, Tjøtta (2019) reveals that only a minority of actual spectators deemed keeping the entire endowment as very socially inappropriate.…”

Section: Serdarevic / Choosing Less Over More Money Erasmus Journal For Philosophy and Economics Aamentioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing Less over More Money

Serdarevic

2021

EJPE

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Why choose less money over more when no one is watching? A central tenet of economics is that this behaviour can be explained by intrinsic motivation. But what does intrinsic motivation entail? What encourages it? This paper answers these questions through a Smithian lens: moral motivation includes not only a naturally strong love of praise and dread of blame but also a natural, and stronger, love of being worthy of praise and dread of being worthy of blame, even if neither is necessarily given. I rely on quantitative and qualitative data from economic experiments to illustrate this claim. While the current scholarship on Smith has applied his theory to situations in which our actions either evoke reactions from others or have monetary consequences for them, I extend his insights to receiver games (Tjøtta 2019) and dice-rolling games (Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi 2013) aimed at eliciting self-regarding concerns, that is, actions affecting the interests of only ourselves. I argue that these games accentuate the strength of the love of praiseworthiness in guiding behaviour, emphasising its immediate reference to others and foundation in intentions along with outcomes.

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Section: Serdarevic / Choosing Less Over More Money Erasmus Journal For Philosophy and Economics Aamentioning

confidence: 99%