Reaping a benefit at the expense of multiple others: We make more selfish choices, and judge others’ selfish choices more lightly, when the social losses are dispersed more thinly across a group

Reaping a benefit at the expense of multiple others: How are the losses of others counted? Meir Barneron, Shoham Choshen-Hillel, Ilan Yaniv. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 164, May 2021, Pages 136-146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.02.004

Highlights

• We studied selfish choices that create social loss, harming the welfare of others.

• We theorized that empathy underlies perceptions of the harm caused to others.

• Participants should be sensitive to the individual harm, not to the aggregate harm.

• Our studies supported these predictions and revealed a dispersion effect.

• Rated feelings of empathy mediated the participants’ judgments of selfish decisions.

Abstract: We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losses on a group of others. We theorize, based on the notion of empathy, that decision-makers consider the magnitude of the pain or loss they inflict on an individual in the group, but are largely insensitive to the number of individuals in the group who suffer losses. Studies involving personal choices or judgments of others’ choices largely confirmed these predictions. They also revealed a dispersion effect, whereby participants made more selfish choices, and judged others’ selfish choices more lightly, when the social losses were dispersed more thinly across a group. It appears that decision-makers’ empathy for others who suffer losses is not readily adjusted to the number of people affected or to the aggregated losses. It also appears that empathy mediates judgments of selfish behavior. The findings are related to theories of empathy, and decisions under conflicts of interest.

Keywords: Judgment and decision makingSelfish vs prosocial behaviorEmpathySocial preferenceConflict of interestDecision ethics