Moral judgment is sensitive to bargaining power.

Area of Science:

• Moral Psychology
• Social Cognition
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Contractualist morality posits actions are moral if agreed upon by rational agents.
• Bargaining power, influenced by stakes and alternatives, affects negotiation outcomes.
• The role of bargaining power in moral judgments remains a key test for contractualist theories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether moral judgments incorporate an individual's bargaining power.
• To examine how perceived bargaining power influences the moral appropriateness of actions in social interactions.
• To test the predictions of contractualist moral theories regarding fairness and power dynamics.

Main Methods:

• Five preregistered experiments involving 3,025 U.S. participants.
• Scenarios depicting everyday social interactions with unequal bargaining power.
• Participants evaluated the moral appropriateness of actions based on described power dynamics.

Main Results:

• Actions were perceived as less morally appropriate when performed by a party with lower bargaining power.
• Participants granted more moral leniency to parties with higher bargaining power.
• The effect of bargaining power on moral judgment was independent of the magnitude of asymmetry.

Conclusions:

• Moral judgments are sensitive to relative bargaining power, not just objective fairness.
• Findings challenge purely rationalist contractualist accounts by highlighting the influence of power dynamics.
• This bias may contribute to the perpetuation of unfair social norms and inequality.