Market mindset impacts moral decisions: The exposure to market relationships makes moral choices more utilitarian by means of proportional thinking |
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Authors: | Tomasz Zaleskiewicz Agata Gasiorowska Anna O Kuzminska Przemyslaw Korotusz Pawel Tomczak |
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Institution: | 1. Center for Research in Economic Behavior, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland;2. Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland |
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Abstract: | We show that exposure to market relationships increases people’s tendency to make utilitarian moral choices by means of proportional thinking—the definitional feature of the market mindset. In Experiment 1, participants primed with market relationships made more utilitarian choices in both the trolley and the footbridge dilemmas. In Experiment 2, priming market mindset led to more utilitarian moral choices and to greater focus on the proportion of survivors to victims. Experiment 3 showed that the effect of market mindset on utilitarian choices held only when the numbers of potential deaths and saved lives were clearly specified. A preregistered Experiment 4 demonstrated that the motivation to use proportional thinking mediates the relationship between market mindset and making utilitarian choices. Experiment 5, also preregistered, showed that the main effect we demonstrated is not due to suppressed emotions and that proportional thinking increases utilitarian choices as part of a broader orientation on rationality. |
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Keywords: | market mindset moral choices proportional thinking utilitarian choices |
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