Moral Preferences in Ultimatum and Impunity Games

We report on a large experiment testing the role of moral preferences in one-shot, anonymous ultimatum and impunity games, which vary the veto power of responders: in the impunity game, if an offer is lower than the responder's minimum acceptable offer, the proposer still receives his share, while the responder gets nothing. We measure moral preferences using the moral foundations questionnaire. We find that: (i) moral preferences are positively associated with proposers' offers in the impunity game to a greater extent than they are in the ultimatum game; (ii) moral preferences are positively associated with responders' minimum acceptable offers in both games. Additional analyses reveal that: (iii) offers in the impunity game are positively associated with both the individualizing and the binding moral dimensions; (iv) minimum acceptable offers in the ultimatum game are positively associated with the binding dimensions; (v) minimum acceptable offers in the impunity game are positively associated with the binding dimensions and negatively with the individualizing dimensions. These results shed light on the complex relationship between moral preferences and behaviour in ultimatum and impunity games