Title: Doing good vs. avoiding bad in prosocial choice: A refined test and extension of the morality preference hypothesis,
Abstract: Prosociality is fundamental to human social life, and, accordingly, much
research has attempted to explain human prosocial behavior. Capraro and Rand
(Judgment and Decision Making, 13, 99-111, 2018) recently provided experimental
evidence that prosociality in anonymous, one-shot interactions (such as
Prisoner's Dilemma and Dictator Game experiments) is not driven by
outcome-based social preferences - as classically assumed - but by a
generalized morality preference for "doing the right thing". Here we argue that
the key experiments reported in Capraro and Rand (2018) comprise prominent
methodological confounds and open questions that bear on influential
psychological theory. Specifically, their design confounds: (i) preferences for
efficiency with self-interest; and (ii) preferences for action with preferences
for morality. Furthermore, their design fails to dissociate the preference to
do "good" from the preference to avoid doing "bad". We thus designed and
conducted a preregistered, refined and extended test of the morality preference
hypothesis (N=801). Consistent with this hypothesis, our findings indicate that
prosociality in the anonymous, one-shot Dictator Game is driven by preferences
for doing the morally right thing. Inconsistent with influential psychological
theory, however, our results suggest the preference to do "good" was as potent
as the preference to avoid doing "bad" in this case.