Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Ends versus Means: Kantians, Utilitarians, and Moral Decision
Author-Name: Roland Bénabou
Author-Email: rbenabou@princeton.edu
Author-Name: Armin Falk
Author-Email: afalk@uni-bonn.de
Author-Name: Luca Henkel
Author-Email: luca.henkel@uchicago.edu
Classification-JEL: C91, D01, D64
Keywords:  morality, deontological, consequentialist, Kantian, ends-versus-means, trolley dilemma,
prosocial, altruism, social preferences

Abstract: Choosing what is morally right can be based on the consequences (ends) resulting from the
decision – the Consequentialist view – or on the conformity of the means involved with some
overarching notion of duty – the Deontological view. Using a series of experiments, we investigate
the overall prevalence and the consistency of consequentialist and deontological decision-making,
when these two moral principles come into conflict. Our design includes a real-stakes version of
the classical trolley dilemma, four novel games that induce ends-versus-means tradeoffs, and a
rule-following task. These six main games are supplemented with six classical self-versus-other
choice tasks, allowing us to relate consequential/deontological behavior to standard measures
of prosociality. Across the six main games, we find a sizeable prevalence (20 to 44%) of nonconsequentialist choices by subjects, but no evidence of stable individual preference types across
situations. In particular, trolley behavior predicts no other ends-versus-means choices. Instead,
which moral principle prevails appears to be context-dependent. In contrast, we find a substantial
level of consistency across self-versus-other decisions, but individuals’ degree of prosociality is
unrelated to how they choose in ends-versus-means tradeoffs


Note: 
Length: 76
Creation-Date: 2024-01
Revision-Date:
File-URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp499
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:CRCTR224_2024_499