Genuine moral commitments resist monetary incentives to switch

Evidence

If individuals solve the dilemma based on their moral sense of transparency, rather than on a cost–benefit analysis, then their strategy should be fixed and independent of local incentives to hide or to disclose benefits. In other words, a given individual would be no more inclined to disclose, if she had to pay for secrecy, and no more inclined to hide, if she had to pay for disclosure. One would then expect that the proportions of individuals opting for secrecy and disclosure would remain stable, whatever the incentives offered to sway people in one direction or the other. The authors of the present commentary are currently testing this prediction. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 303

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A clean falsifiable test distinguishing evolved moral sense from strategic calculation: if a preference is genuinely moral it should be insensitive to price incentives in both directions. This operationalizes the sacred-value concept empirically.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this prediction hold in the fumi-e context, where the Japanese offered death as the ‘price’ of disclosure — presumably exceeding any incentive threshold? If strategies are truly fixed regardless of incentive magnitude, how was apostasy ever induced?
• XREF: connects to: Material incentives harden sacred-value conflicts while symbolic gestures soften them; Moral dispositions resist contrary incentives yet people overestimate their behavioral role — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 216; Moral behavior shifts with the market supply and demand of cooperative partners — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 394 (+13 more)

Related

• Reputational self-interest alone cannot explain why people act morally when unobserved. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Moral dispositions resist contrary incentives yet people overestimate their behavioral role #corroborates (0.88) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 216
• Mere incentive compatibility is insufficient for trust as encapsulated interest #expands (0.80)
• Moral behavior shifts with the market supply and demand of cooperative partners #contradicts (0.78) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 394
• A social equilibrium persists when agents lack incentives to change it #expands (0.78)
• Cooperation can occur without trust when incentives align #contradicts (0.75)
• Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances. #qualifies (0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 390
• Duty-based moral cultures suppress cost-sensitivity in prosocial decisions. #qualifies (0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 558
• Moral consistency can be learned rule-following rather than an innate disposition #qualifies (0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 503
• Public commitment makes future fulfillment costly to renege on by invoking present social constraints #contradicts (0.72)