Reluctance to Benefit from Others’ Misfortune: Feeling that benefitting from it increases the likelihood that such harm will actually occur

Lelieveld, Gert-Jan, Yoel Inbar, and Erik van Dijk 2018. “Explaining Reluctance to Benefit from Others’ Misfortune”. PsyArXiv. March 12. psyarxiv.com/twmnp

Abstract: The current article investigates decisions where people are not causing harm to others, but only benefit from the harm. Specifically, we assessed people's willingness to benefit from other's chance-caused misfortunes. In five studies, examining real behavior of individuals in a television game show (Study 1) and using experimental betting tasks (Studies 2-5), we show that people are reluctant to benefit from the misfortunes of others. While in all studies participants' decisions were objectively unrelated to the likelihood of misfortune befalling others, subsequent analyses indicate that people erroneously feel that benefitting from others' misfortune increases the likelihood that such harm will actually occur. The results are discussed in relation to the literature on moral decision making and magical thinking.