Publication Date:
2013-05-11
Description:
The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously. In contrast, for morally neutral consumption choices, differences between institutions are small.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Falk, Armin -- Szech, Nora -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 May 10;340(6133):707-11. doi: 10.1126/science.1231566.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany. armin.falk@uni-bonn.de〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23661753" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Commerce/*ethics
;
Decision Making
;
Humans
;
Mice
;
*Morals
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
