Project description
Delegation of immoral decisions
People value morality and want to be seen as ethical, yet unethical acts still occur and harm individuals and societies. Research shows that decision-makers often delegate immoral actions to others to avoid blame while enjoying the benefits. This tactic may increase inequality and obscure responsibility. With this in mind, the ERC-funded DELEGATION project aims to uncover the psychology of delegation in the moral domain. Based on the new 3R framework, it will examine how people strategically delegate decisions to protect their reputation and avoid guilt, and how observers assign blame and praise for delegated harmful and helpful decisions respectively. By studying both adults and children, the project will offer new insights into the overlooked ways moral and immoral motives shape our everyday decisions.
Objective
Modern societies are tormented by warfare, crime, corruption, and environmental exploitation. If many people have prosocial goals and desire to see themselves and to be seen by others as moral, how do immoral acts like these continue to happen? Economic research suggests a critical role of delegation: Decision-makers can delegate unethical, yet profitable decisions to delegates, which increases resource inequality, and at the same time averts punishment of delegators. Yet, such indirect immorality, as an inherently elusive, inconspicuous phenomenon, is not only overlooked by observers, but also by psychological research. Who delegates immoral behaviors, when, and why? What determines observers’ reactions to delegators?
I propose the new 3R framework of delegation and test it in three empirical work packages spanning diverse methodology from social, moral and cognitive psychology and behavioral economics: People employ delegation strategically to reap the benefits of immoral acts while effectively avoiding responsibility and protecting their moral reputation in the eyes of others. Basic social-cognitive mechanisms explain these intra- and interpersonal benefits of delegation. Whereas previous work often focused on the few callous individuals who do not care about moral norms, the 3R framework assumes that precisely those who are morally motivated delegate immoral decisions to minimize their guilt and escape social blame. Moreover, I predict and test an important asymmetry in how observers assign blame and praise for delegated immoral versus moral behaviors. Given the fundamental psychological nature of immoral delegation, it should be frequent in people’s everyday lives and should already be observable in children. Taken together, the project aims to comprehensively study delegation under a unifying framework. It will contribute a groundbreaking new perspective to the study of immoral behavior, and thereby illuminate the complex social nature of human morality.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
33615 Bielefeld
Germany