Delegating decisions: An overlooked way of pursuing immoral goals

Introduction

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 Insights

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.

Research Questions

• Who delegates immoral behaviors, when, and why?
• What determines observers’ reactions to delegators?

Proposed Framework

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.

Strategic Delegation

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.

Moral Motivation

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.

Observer Reactions

Moreover, I predict and test an important asymmetry in how observers assign blame and praise for delegated immoral versus moral behaviors.

Implications

Given the fundamental psychological nature of immoral delegation, it should be frequent in people’s everyday lives and should already be observable in children.

Conclusion

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.