2020/02/27 by Ennio Bilancini, Bilancini, Ennio, Leonardo Boncinelli +7
Decision Sciences · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Ethics in Business and Education #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.12464
openalex publication_date 2020/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper we investigate the effect of moral suasion on ingroup favouritism. We report a well-powered, pre-registered, two-stage 2x2 mixed-design experiment. In the first stage, groups are formed on the basis of how participants answer to a set of questions, concerning non-morally relevant issues in one treatment (assorting on non-moral preferences), and morally relevant issues in another treatment (assorting on moral preferences). In the second stage, participants choose how to split a given amount of money between participants of their own group and participants of the other group, first in the baseline setting and then in a setting where they are told to do what they believe to be morally right (moral suasion). Our main results are: (i) in the baseline, participants tend to favour their own group to a greater extent when groups are assorted according to moral preferences, compared to when they are assorted according to non-moral preferences; (ii) the net effect of moral suasion is to decrease ingroup favouritism, but there is also a non-negligible proportion of participants for whom moral suasion increases ingroup favouritism; (iii) the effect of moral suasion is substantially stable across group assorting and four pre-registered individual characteristics (gender, political orientation, religiosity, pro-life vs pro-choice ethical convictions).