Moral Illusions

Sammanfattning: Just as optical illusions can trick our visual senses, our moral sense can be misguided by moral illusions. In this thesis, I investigate whether moral illusions can arise from mental shortcuts (availability bias), cognitive biases (attribution bias), contextual factors (possibility to avoid information), and decision rules (democratic decision-making).The results in the thesis provide two main findings. First, I find that moral illusions occur in competitive situations where many people compete for the same reward. In Essay I, I find that inaccurate beliefs about procedural fairness can motivate people to act selfishly, and that simple information cues about procedural fairness can reduce such behavior. In Essay II, I demonstrate that increased confidence has polarizing effects on meritocratic beliefs and that success (as opposed to failure) decreases preferences for redistribution. Second, the results show that moral behavior can be surprisingly similar across contextual factors. In Essay III, I find that the possibility to avoid information about other people’s the efforts has limited effects on selfish behavior. In Essay IV, the results show no evidence that democratic decision-making, as opposed to individual decision making, increases selfish and immoral behavior.The results in the thesis suggest that our moral sense have many similarities with our visual perception. In most cases, it is not significantly affected by contextual factors. However, when the information is vague or uncertain, the brain sometimes fills in missing information and creates images that does not match with reality. The analogy between optical illusions and moral illusion can help us to better understand our own, and others’, moral behavior. We may not always agree with everyone’s interpretations of reality, but we can understand where they come from.