Data and Code for: Enabling or Limiting Cognitive Flexibility? Evidence of Demand for Moral Commitment

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Silvia Saccardo, Carnegie Mellon University; Marta Serra-Garcia, University of California-San Diego

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Code			12/06/2022 12:07:PM
Data			12/06/2022 12:07:PM
Qualtrics			12/06/2022 12:10:PM
Results			12/06/2022 12:07:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	190.5 KB	12/06/2022 07:07:AM

Project Citation:

Saccardo, Silvia, and Serra-Garcia, Marta. Data and Code for: Enabling or Limiting Cognitive Flexibility? Evidence of Demand for Moral Commitment. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-23. https://doi.org/10.3886/E180741V1

Project Description

Summary: Moral behavior is more prevalent when individuals cannot easily distort their beliefs self-servingly. Do individuals seek to limit or enable their ability to distort beliefs? How do these choices affect behavior? Experiments with over 9,000 participants show preferences are heterogeneous -- 30% of participants prefer to limit belief distortion, while over 40% prefer to enable it, even if costly. A random assignment mechanism reveals that being assigned to the preferred environment is necessary for curbing or enabling self-serving behavior. Third parties can anticipate these effects, suggesting some sophistication about the cognitive constraints to belief distortion.

Funding Sources: National Science Foundation (1926043); University of California-San Diego (84132)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: belief distortion; morality; sophistication; commitment; experiments

JEL Classification:
      C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
      D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
      D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

Geographic Coverage: United States, Canada, United Kingdom

Time Period(s): 5/2/2019 – 11/30/2021

Collection Date(s): 5/2/2019 – 11/30/2021 (Spring 2019 through Fall 2021)

Universe: Individuals who are 18 years of age and older.

Data Type(s): experimental data

Methodology

Data Source: All experiments were conducted via the CloudResearch platform, which we used to recruit high quality subjects from Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), except for the ChoiceFree Professionals treatment, which was conducted on both CloudResearch and Prolific Academic targeting participants who self-report to work in two industries in which advice is very frequent: finance and insurance, and legal services. Prolific has their own sample of participants, and we recruited as many professionals as possible within the UK, the US, and Canada. CloudResearch draws professionals from AMT, and again we recruited as many professionals based in the US as possible.

Collection Mode(s): web-based survey

Scales: Not used.

Weights: Not applicable

Unit(s) of Observation: Individuals

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2023-01-23]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.