The Moral Costs of Nastiness

Abstract

We introduce two variants of the one‐shot joy‐of‐destruction minigame (mini‐JOD). Two players are endowed with the same amount of money. They simultaneously decide whether or not to reduce the other player's payoff at an own cost. In one treatment there was a probability that nature would destroy the opponent's money anyway. We test whether this feature reduces the moral costs of nastiness, and find that destruction rates rise significantly, despite the absence of strategic reasons. (JEL C72, C91, D03)

Is increasing inequality harmful? Experimental evidence

“…In line with previous findings (e.g., Zizzo and Oswald, 2001;Zizzo, 2003;Abbink and Sadrieh, 2009;Abbink and Herrmann, 2011), antisocial behavior is prevalent even in a situation where subjects earn their income and where inequality is low. About 23 percent of subjects reduce the income of at least one other group member in the treatment with no performance bonus (No Bonus).…”

“…People become victims of random violence, for example, when protests turn into riots or more generally in conflict situations (e.g., Abbink and Herrmann, 2011;Abbink and Sadrieh, 2009). Sometimes people find pleasure in destroying or damaging the property of others.…”

“…As such, they focus on how stakeholders or spectators redistribute total wealth, which is typically generated through risky or risk-free investments. 5 Importantly, although redistribu-4 A few papers demonstrate the prevalence of antisocial behavior even in situations where the motive of inequality reduction is missing and money burning may occur out of pure pleasure (e.g., Abbink and Sadrieh, 2009;Abbink and Herrmann, 2011;Prediger, Vollan and Herrmann, 2014). 5 A related stream of literature is interested in the demand for redistribution and its link to fairness perceptions (e.g., Krawczyk, 2010;Erkal, Gangadharan and Nikiforakis, 2011;Durante, Putterman and van der Weele, 2014;Rey-Biel, tion can lead to a reduction of income for some subjects, it is always to the benefit of another subject and is thus a simplistic way to mimic a progressive tax system.…”

A Study of the Triggers of Conflict and Emotional Reactions

“…There are several differences between our experiment and previous ones [44][45][46][47]. First, we incorporate group identity via the preference elicitation procedure, which allows us to create a natural conflict environment.…”

“…Our treatments were based on the modified "Joy of Destruction" game [44,45] and a "Reverse Dictator" game [46,47]. In the Baseline treatment, after earning $10 in the effort task, one participant in each pair was assigned the Sender role and the other participant was assigned the Receiver role.…”