Market mindset impacts moral decisions: The exposure to market relationships makes moral choices more utilitarian by means of proportional thinking

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 troll...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of social psychology 2020-12, Vol.50 (7), p.1500-1522
Main Authors: Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz, Gasiorowska, Agata, Kuzminska, Anna O., Korotusz, Przemyslaw, Tomczak, Pawel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Choices
Emotions
Experiments
market mindset
Markets
moral choices
Morality
Motivation
Priming
proportional thinking
Rationality
utilitarian choices
Victims
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0046-2772
1099-0992
DOI:10.1002/ejsp.2701