Moral Distance and Moral Motivations in Dictator Games

We perform an experimenta linvestigation using a dictator game inwhich individuals must make a moral decision —to give or not to give anamount of money to poor people in the Third World. A questionnaire inwhich the subjects are asked about the reasons for their decision showsthat, at least in this case, moral motivations carry a heavy weight in thedecision: the majority of dictators give the money for reasons of a consequentialistnature. Based on the results presented here and of otheranalogous experiments, we conclude that dicator behavior can be understoodin terms of moral distance rather than social distance and that itsystematically deviates from the egoism assumption in economic modelsand game theory.