Abstract
Two experiments tested participants' attributions for others' immoral behaviors when conducted for more versus less money. We hypothesized and found that observers would blame wrongdoers more when seeing a transgression enacted for little rather than a lot of money, and that this would be evident in observers' hand-washing behavior. Experiment 1 used a cognitive dissonance paradigm. Participants (N = 160) observed a confederate lie in exchange for either a relatively large or a small monetary payment. Participants blamed the liar more in the small (versus large) money condition. Participants (N = 184) in Experiment 2 saw images of someone knocking over another to obtain a small, medium, or large monetary sum. In the small (versus large) money condition, participants blamed the perpetrator (money) more. Hence, participants assigned less blame to moral wrong-doers, if the latter enacted their deed to obtain relatively large sums of money. Small amounts of money accentuate the immorality of others' transgressions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 299-306 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Journal of Consumer Psychology |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank Qing Yang, Meng Wang, and Li Gu for their help with data collection. The authors also thank the three anonymous reviewers and the action editor for their insightful comments during the revision process. This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 91124004 , 31171002 , and 31322023 ) and 985-3 Research Program of Sun Yat-Sen University ( 90026-3284000 ).
Keywords
- Attribution
- Blame
- Cognitive dissonance
- Contagion
- Money
- Morality