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legont [soylentnews.org] writes:

Wall Street Journal runs an interesting article about a recent research published in the journal Science (unfortunately, the original paper is pay-walled)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527 02304831304579543782971691734 [wsj.com]

Critics of market economies say that they make participants indifferent to costs imposed on third parties (foreign workers, polluted communities, endangered animals, etc.) — in other words, that markets degrade morals. In what may have been a first, the German economists Armin Falk of the University of Bonn and Nora Szech of the University of Bamberg wanted to test this idea empirically.

They gave volunteers $10 and told them that as standard lab protocol, a young, healthy mouse would be killed unless the volunteers bought it for $10 — in which case it would live out its life, well cared-for. Did they want to take the money or save the mouse? Of the subjects, 46% wanted to kill the mouse for the money. This constituted the baseline for individual decision-making.

Now for a "bilateral market" involving pairs of subjects. If each pair could agree on a way to split $20, the mouse would die, and the pair would get the money; otherwise, the mouse lived. Thus the mouse became a third party to the pair's dealings. In this case, 72% of subjects would kill the mouse.

However, a core of about 20% of individuals will never take money over the mouse, regardless of financial incentive.

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Original Submission