IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ajk/ajkdps/275.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ends versus Means: Kantians, Utilitarians, and Moral Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Roland Bénabou

    (Princeton University, NBER, CEPR, IZA, BREAD, and briq)

  • Armin Falk

    (University of Bonn)

  • Luca Henkel

    (University of Chicago and University of CEMA, CESifo, JILAEE)

Abstract

Choosing what is morally right can be based on the consequences (ends) resulting from the decision – the Consequentialist view – or on the conformity of the means involved with some overarching notion of duty – the Deontological view. Using a series of experiments, we investigate the overall prevalence and the consistency of consequentialist and deontological decision-making, when these two moral principles come into conflict. Our design includes a real-stakes version of the classical trolley dilemma, four novel games that induce ends-versus-means tradeoffs, and a rule-following task. These six main games are supplemented with six classical self-versus-other choice tasks, allowing us to relate consequential/deontological behavior to standard measures of prosociality. Across the six main games, we find a sizeable prevalence (20 to 44%) of non-consequentialist choices by subjects, but no evidence of stable individual preference types across situations. In particular, trolley behavior predicts no other ends-versus-means choices. Instead, which moral principle prevails appears to be context-dependent. In contrast, we find a substantial level of consistency across self-versus-other decisions, but individuals’ degree of prosociality is unrelated to how they choose in ends-versus-means tradeoffs.

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Bénabou & Armin Falk & Luca Henkel, 2024. "Ends versus Means: Kantians, Utilitarians, and Moral Decisions," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 275, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_275_2024.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel L. Chen & Martin Schonger, 2022. "Social preferences or sacred values? Theory and evidence of deontological motivations," Post-Print hal-03894046, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Bo & Yang, Zihan & Le Hoa Pham, Thi & Deng, Nana & Du, Heran, 2023. "Can social impacts promote residents’ pro-environmental intentions and behaviour: Evidence from large-scale demand response experiment in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    morality; deontological; consequentialist; Kantian; ends-versus-means; trolley dilemma; prosocial; altruism; social preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ECONtribute Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econtribute.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.