The Limited Moral Self-Discipline Of Allocation Decision In Dictator Game

When making allocation decisions,the allocators are not only driven by their selfinterest preferences,but also constrained by their moral self.Previous studies have focused on the role of self-interests from the perspective of economics,while relatively neglecting the role of moral self.This study aims to examine the role and underlying mechanism of the moral self in restricting allocation decisions systematically.Specifically,we focuses on the following three questions.(1)How does the moral self constrain allocation decisions?(2)What kind of moral self-assessment do allocators have before and after decision-making,especially,do decision-makers who make unfair allocation experience moral self-threat?(3)If they experience moral self-threat,why do they still make unfair allocations? Based on the self-concept maintenance theory,combined with the moral threshold model and the moral imbalance theory,we hypothesize that:(1)under the constraints of the moral self,the decision-makers who make unfair allocation obey the moral threshold with the individual prohibitive norms as the specific indicator.(2)Decision makers who make unfair allocation will experience moral self-threat,but they can also maintain a certain degree of moral selfconcept,while decision-makers who make fair allocation will not experience moral self-threat.(3)Decision makers who make unfair allocation will show self-justified fairness and normative perception in order to alleviate their moral self-threat,but decision-makers who make fair allocation will not.Present research tested the above hypotheses through three studies,adopting the anonymous single dictator game paradigm and focusing on the situation where the allocator and the receiver contribute the same to the gain.Study 1 mainly explored how the moral self constrained allocation decisions.Among them,Experiment 1 explored whether decision makers who made unfair allocation complied with their own personal prohibition norms;Experiment 2 examined whether moral self influenced personal prohibition norms.Study 2 mainly explored whether decision makers who made unfair allocation would show self-justified fair perception in order to alleviate the moral selfthreat.Among them,experiments 3-6 took receivers,control groups who did not know their roles and third parties as reference groups,and integrated the between-subject and within-subject design to explore whether decision makers who made unfair allocation would show self-justified fair perception before making decisions.Experiment 7 explored whether decision makers who made unfair allocations would show selfjustified fairness perception after making the decisions.Study 3 mainly explored whether decision makers who made unfair allocation would show self-justified normative perception in order to alleviate the moral self-threat.Among them,experiments 8 and 9 used control groups who do not know their roles and third parties as reference groups to explore whether decision makers who made unfair allocations would show self-justified normative perception before making decisions.Experiment 10 explored whether decision makers who made unfair allocations would show selfjustified normative perceptions after making the decisions.In addition,Studies 1,2,and 3 also measured the moral self-assessment of the allocator before or after they made the decisions.The results showed that:(1)Decision makers who make unfair allocation abided by their own personal prohibition norms,specifically,the amount of money they gave to the recipient was not significantly different from their own personal prohibition norms.In addition,personal prohibition norms were subject to moral self,as the moral self-requirements increase,the personal prohibition norms also increase accordingly.(2)Decision makers who made unfair allocations experienced moral self-threat,that is,they had a relatively low moral self-evaluation compared to the reference group,and decision makers who made fair allocations did not.However,decision makers who made unfair allocation could also maintain a certain degree of moral self-concept,that is,their moral self-evaluation was significantly higher than the median value of the moral self-scale.(3)Decision makers who made unfair allocation showed self-justified fair perception,that is,they thought that the advantageous unfair allocation was fairer than the reference group.They also showed self-justified norm perception,that is,they had lower or more self-interested norms perception compared to the reference group.On the one hand,these findings exemplify the restrictive role of the moral self in allocation decisions,that is,decision makers who make unfair allocations do obey their moral threshold with individual prohibitive norms as the indicator.On the other hand,these findings suggest the limitation of the role of moral self-restraint,that is,the decision-makers who make unfair allocation do experience the moral self-threat,but still make unfair allocation.When making the allocation decisions,the allocators essentially balance self-interest preference with moral self.Self-interest preference may be an important reason for the limited role of moral self-discipline.In addition,the selfjustified fairness and normative perception exhibited by the decision-makers who make unfair allocation alleviate their moral self-threat to a certain extent.Which result in that they obtain certain benefits,while still able to maintain certain degree of their moral self.Therefore,self-justifications are another important reason for the limited role of moral self-restraint.These findings have theoretically deepened the understanding of the psychological and behavioral rules of allocation decisions in the dictator game.In terms of application,they suggest that we can promote fair allocation from the perspective of improving moral self-requirements and interfering with self-justification.