Learning moral values: Another's desire to punish enhances one's own punitive behavior.

ABSTRACT: There is little consensus about how moral values are learned. Using a novel social learning task, we examine whether vicarious learning impacts moral values-specifically fairness preferences-during decisions to restore justice. In both laboratory and Internet-based experimental settings, we employ a dyadic justice game where participants receive unfair splits of money from another player and respond resoundingly to the fairness violations by exhibiting robust nonpunitive, compensatory behavior (baseline behavior). In a subsequent learning phase, participants are tasked with responding to fairness violations on behalf of another participant (a receiver) and are given explicit trial-by-trial feedback about the receiver's fairness preferences (e.g., whether they prefer punishment as a means o

SUBMITTER: FeldmanHall O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6072600 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature