We investigate the elasticity of moral ignorance with respect to monetary incentives and social norm information. We propose that individuals suffer from higher moral costs when rejecting a certain donation, and thus pay for moral ignorance. Consistent with our model, we find significant...

This paper studies individual truth-telling behavior in the presence of multiple lying opportunities with heterogeneous stake sizes. The results show that individuals lie downwards (i.e. forgo money due to their lie) in low-stakes situations in order to signal honesty, and thereby mitigate the...

An extensive literature documents that people are willing to sacrifice personal material gain to adhere to a moral motive. However, less is known about the psychological mechanisms that operate when two moral motives come into conflict. We hypothesize that individuals adhere to the moral motive...

This paper experimentally investigates how concerns for social approval relate to intrinsic motivations to purchase ethically. Participants state their willingness-to-pay for both a fair trade and a conventional chocolate bar in private or publicly. A standard model of social image predicts that...

This paper studies how organizational design affects moral outcomes. Subjects face the decision to either kill mice for money or to save mice. We compare a Baseline treatment where subjects are fully pivotal to a Diffused-Pivotality treatment where subjects simultaneously choose in groups of...