DO PEOPLE DELAY MORE IN MORAL
DECISION-MAKING? THE ROLE OF
MORAL IDENTITY IN THE DELAY OF
MAKING MORAL DECISIONS
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics & Business Duisenberg Building, Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE, Groningen
July 14, 2019
Supervisors
Dr. L (Laetitia). B. Mulder Prof. dr. B (Bernard). A. Nijstad
Author Jiahua Zong
Student Number: s3450961
Research Master in Economics and Business
E-mail: zong_jiahua@outlook.com Tel: +31 (0)6 1938 0410
1 Abstract
Decision delay is common practice in daily decision-making. One factor that may contribute to decision delay is decision type (moral vs. amoral), but the effect of decision type on decision delay has not been investigated. The current paper experimentally tests the relationship between decision type and decision delay, and examines the inverted U-shape moderation effect of moral identity in this relationship. One experiment was conducted, in which people were asked to recall one past decision they made. The results suggest that people are overall more likely to delay when facing moral decisions. Besides, the perceived decision difficulty for moral and amoral decisions seem to contingent on moral identity. But the results did not prove the curvilinear effect of moral identity. These findings emphasize the role of decision type and personality traits in decision delay, which have implications for understanding (im)moral behaviors and promoting social sustainability.
2 1 Introduction
Imagine that a person receives an email from a knowledge-sharing website, which advertises a premium package to its customers. If this person is a frequent visitor of this website, she/he may immediately have an idea about whether it is worthwhile spending money for this premium package. So, she/he could decide whether or not to purchase without much delay. However, what if the content of the email is about a donation activity for supporting the operation of this website, which states that the website is owned by a non-profit organization? Will the person decide without much delay as that in the previous situation?
Different from the situation about buying a premium package, the decision about whether to donate to support a frequently used website is a moral decision. In this (donation) decision, donating is the moral alternative because users enjoy the resources and services provided by the website and therefore, they should do something in return as reciprocity; not donating is the self-interested alternative because people could still enjoy the service from the websites with no monetary cost.
The website example reflects a key difference between amoral decisions and moral decisions. Amoral decisions have no moral component, while moral decisions contain a moral alternative and a self-interested alternative, of which the two alternatives are usually in conflict with each other. Although decisions could be distinguished into two decision types -- moral decisions and amoral decisions, existing literature mainly investigates decision-delay behavior for amoral decisions (e.g., Anderson, 2003) and little is known about how moral components of a decision would influence decision delay.
3 the losses caused by these moral decisions usually are not merely influence the decision-maker themselves. Instead, the consequence of the moral decision can influence others or even the entire society. For instance, if some people refuse to reduce the use of plastic bags, their behaviors will harm the environment in the long run and all creature in earth can be influenced. Second, decision delay is a common practice in daily decision-making (Greenleaf & Lehmann, 1995) but the relationship between moral decision-making and decision delay has rarely investigated. Therefore, it will add value to both decision delay literature and moral decision-making literature by investigating the relationship between moral decision-decision-making and decision delay. Third, the attitude-behavior gap has been identified in various areas including moral domain (Hall et al., 2012; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006; Carrington et al., 2014; Claudy et al., 2013). Understand the relationship between decision delay and moral decision-making can contribute to the development of interventions that helps narrowing the gap and promoting moral behaviors in society and organizations.
4 Inspired by the inconsistency in the existing literature, one personality trait – moral identity – is introduced in the relationship between moral decision and decision delay and the relationship between moral decision and perceived decision difficulty. Moral identity represents the extent to which a person’s moral-self is central for a person’s sense of self (Blasi, 1984; Aquino & Reed, 2002). And it has been proved to positively relate to various moral behaviors (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Hertz & Krettenauer, 2015; Reed & Aquino, 2003). Moral identity is expected to explain the inconsistent findings in the existing literature because with different moral identity, people’s perception for a certain moral decision may be different. For instance, for people with high moral identity, not returning the money they found in a bus might be regarded as one thing that they will never do. However, for people with low moral identity, it may not be a problem for them to keep the money they found on a bus.
Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between moral decision-making and decision delay. Besides, by introducing moral identity into the relationship, this paper also aims to reconcile the inconsistency in the existing literature between moral decisions and perceived decision difficulty.
5 2 Scientific Background
2.1 Decision delay
The term “decision delay” in previous literature has been used in various ways. Delay in the moral decision-making literature is often used to describe the stage that people actively think about which alternative to choose. For instance, Chen and Krajbich (2018) use time delay as a forced 10s thinking period that permits people to think about the decision. However, such decision delay only includes a short period of active decision-making time. In many situations in real life, when people delay their decision, it is likely that they take a much longer time than just a few seconds to think about their decision. Sometimes a delay period may even last for several months (Greenleaf and Lehmann, 1995), and people are not necessarily engaged with the decision continually. Therefore, the existing literature of delay in moral decision-making literature is less suitable for understanding the mechanism of delay in a longer and more complex time period.
6 be a type of decision avoidance. Under some circumstances, decision avoidance may result in decision delay, which means people choose to delay their decision because they want to avoid making the decision. But delay could also happen when people are willing to make the decision but need more time to think or to collect relevant information.
Decision delay are often cause by decision difficulty (Dhar, 1997a; Luce, 1998). The research conducted by Tversky and Shafir (1992) suggest that when a dominant option exists, which is an option that is more attractive than all other options on all criteria, people are less likely to delay their decision, comparing to when the options are similar in attractiveness. Because of the existence of a dominant option, a decision becomes easier and therefore delay decrease. This argument is rooted in the value maximization theory, which suggests people always choose the available option that could bring them the highest value (Rachlin et al., 1981). When people experience a high level of perceived decision difficulty, the total value gained from making a decision become lower than the value to delay it. Therefore, people choose to delay when they experience a high level of perceived decision difficulty.
Conflict theory explains the reason why people experience decision difficulty (Chatterjee & Heath, 1996). According to conflict theory, decision conflict is defined as “simultaneous
opposing tendencies within individuals to accept and reject a given course of action” (Janis &
7 window in conflict with the desire of doing the right thing, perceived decision difficulty for this decision increase. Therefore, to understand decision delay in moral decision-making, it is important to first understand how moral decisions influence perceived decision difficulty based on conflict theory.
2.3 Decision type (moral vs. amoral) and perceived decision difficulty
Moral decisions are decisions involving moral aspects, and a distinction can be made between right-right and right-wrong moral decisions. Right-right decisions refer to decisions between two competing moral alternatives, while right-wrong decisions refer to decisions between a moral alternative and a self-interested alternative (Gunia et al., 2012).
For instance, the trolley dilemma (Thomson, 1984) is one typical right-right moral decision. In this dilemma, people are asked to decide whether to pull a level to switch the running trolley to a different track. If people decide to not pull the level, the trolley will kill five people that are trapped on the original track. If people decide to pull the level to switch the trolley to a different track, the train will kill one person that is trapped on that track. Because the two alternatives in this scenario is either doing nothing and letting the trolley kills 5 people or pulling a level and letting the trolley kill another one person. Both two alternatives are moral alternatives and there is no obviously a self-interest option. In contrast, the decision about whether to admit oneself as a window-breaker is an example of a right-wrong moral decision. In this decision, admitting one’s fault is the moral alternative but not admitting one’s fault is the self-interested alternative.
8 as moral alternatives. With the purpose of promoting moral behaviors in society, the moral decisions that we want to focus on should have a relatively morally right alternative. Thus, right-wrong moral decisions fulfil this requirement but not right-right moral decisions. Bedsides, people frequently make right-wrong moral decisions in daily decision-making and right-wrong moral decisions can induce long-term negative consequences for organizations and society due to the existence of self-interested alternatives (Beauchamp et al., 2004; Lewis & Bates, 2011). Therefore, when we use the term “moral decisions” in the following paragraphs, we only refer to right-wrong moral decisions.
In this paper, we adopt the term “decision type” to represent two different decisions: moral decisions and amoral decisions. Compared with amoral decisions, moral decisions involve values (Jones, 1991), have consequences for others (Gunia et al., 2012), and include a trade-off between a moral option and a self-interested option (Gunia et al., 2012). Taking the breaking window example, if a person broke his/her own window, then the decision might be whether to repair it or not, which is an amoral decision. However, if this person broke another person’s window, this decision involves others and is influenced by this person’s morality. Moreover, the decision would contain a potential conflict between being honest and lying to saving the repairing money.
9 2011). The existence of such a dilemma is likely to increase the conflict level for a moral decision. Therefore, people may experience higher perceived decision difficulty when they face moral decisions compared with amoral decisions. Below, we will specify the difficulty of moral decision in detail from three aspects: moral values, consequences for other people, and the existence of social pressure.
The difficulty of moral decision
Involving moral values is one important contributor to perceived decision difficulty in moral decision-making. The definition of value in Cambridge dictionary is “the beliefs people have
that control their behavior, especially about what is right and wrong, and what is most important in life”. Values are closely associated with individual decision-making (Fritzsche &
Oz, 2007). For instance, people all have their opinion about whether we should help people in need or whether we should protect the environment. All these opinions are people’s moral values.
10 Consequences for other people is another factor that can contribute to perceived decision difficulty in moral decision-making. One important difference between moral decisions and amoral decisions is that moral decisions always involve consequences for other people or for society (Beauchamp et al., 2004; Gunia et al., 2012). People dislike causing negative outcomes, especially when the outcomes are related to other people (Crockett et al., 2014; Ritov & Baron, 1990). Crockett, Kurth-Nelson, Siegel, Dayan, and Dolan (2014) find that people are willing to pay more money to reduce others’ pain (that caused by electric shocks) than their own, which implies that people value others’ pain more than their own pain. And when people make decisions that have consequences for other people, the response time is longer (Crockett et al., 2014). That may because when decisions can influence other people, decision-makers have to take account for other people’s interest next to their self-interest, which makes the decision more complicated and the evaluation for different alternative becomes more uncertain and more difficult. Indeed, Bastardi and Shafir (1998) found a higher possibility of decision delay when people face a decision that could influence other people. Besides, people are more decision averse when they are aware of the potentially inequitable outcomes for others (Beattie et al., 1994). Therefore, consequences for other people in moral decision-making may increase perceived decision difficulty and further increase decision delay.
11 immorally. But when facing a self-interest goal at the same time, a higher decision conflict may lead to a higher level of perceived decision difficulty.
The ease of moral decision
Although the above suggests moral decisions may cause higher perceived decision difficulty, some other evidences suggest the opposite effect, which stating that moral decision is easier than amoral decision. For example, Hanselmann and Tanner (2008) compared the perceived decision difficulty for right-right moral decision, right-wrong moral decision, and amoral decision. They found that people reported higher perceived decision difficulty for amoral decision compared with right-wrong moral decision. For example, one of the right-wrong moral scenarios Hanselmann and Tanner (2008) used in their experiment was that participants were asked to imagine themselves as the president of the local authority. Participants faced with a decision between using money to improve flood protection in the village or use money to face-lift for the village square. In contrast, one of the amoral scenarios was about a decision between two different job offers.
12 perceived decision difficulty suggests that the perceived decision difficulty in moral decisions might be contingent on other factors, such as moral identity.
2.4 Moral identity
Moral identity is an important moral-related personality trait (Aquino & Freeman, 2009). It significantly impacts moral relevant behaviors (Aquino & Freeman, 2009; Aquino & Reed, 2002; Blasi, 1984; Lapsley & Lasky, 2001) by influencing people’s interpretation and responses to moral situations (Shao et al., 2008). Moral identity is defined as the extent to which a person’s moral-self (e.g. honest and caring) is seen as a central part of the overall self-concept (Aquino & Reed, 2002). According to the theory of identity-based motivation (Blasi, 1984; Oyserman et al, 2007), if moral self is central to an individual, it generates a sense of obligation to engage in moral actions as individuals have the goal to keep their behavior consistent with how they view themselves (Blasi, 1984). The more central the moral self is to an individual, the higher moral identity they have and the more likely the moral identity is to impact feelings and behaviors (Yang, 2013; Higgins, 1996).
Moral identity may play a role in the relationship between decision type (moral vs. amoral) and perceived decision difficulty. If moral identity is not central to an individual, people will feel less obligated to engage in moral actions. When people face a moral decision that includes a moral option and interest option, the conflict caused by the eagerness to maximize self-interest and the obligation to conduct moral behaviors may decrease because of the lower obligation of conducting moral behaviors. Therefore, they will feel a clear preference for the self-interested option.
13 highly value the moral option and the conflict decreases because the self-interested option is no longer relevant compared to the moral option.
When moral identity is at an intermediate level, finally, people care about socially desirable moral behaviors but at the same time they are attracted by the self-interest alternative. Under these circumstances, people would generate a higher level of perceived decision difficulty caused by the higher conflict level in moral decision-making. As a consequence, the possibility for people to delay their decision increase.
3 Hypotheses
To test out the conceptual model, two different approaches were adopted. According to the conceptual model in Figure 1, the type of decision may affect whether people delay their decision or not. In the first approach, rather than test the relationship directly, we have asked people to recall and describe a decision they delayed or did not delay. Then based on people’s description, these decisions will be coded into two categories: moral decision and amoral decision. If the conceptual model is true, we expect the recalling of a delayed/no-delayed decision influences the type of decision described. Also, we expect a curve linear moderation effect of moral identity on the relationship between delay/no-delay condition and decision type. According to the conceptual model, people with an intermediate level of moral identity, comparing with people with high/low level of moral identity, are more likely to delay a moral decision than an amoral decision. Therefore, when they are asked to recall a decision they delayed, they may more likely to recall a moral decision than people with high/low moral identity.
Hypothesis 1: Moral identity moderates the relationship between the delay/no-delay decision
14
moral decision when they are asked to describe a decision they delayed than when they are asked to describe a decision they did not delay. People with a high and low level of moral identity are more likely to describe an amoral decision when they are asked to describe a decision they delayed than when they are asked to describe a decision they did not delay.
The second approach is to directly test the moderation effect of moral identity on the relationship between decision type and perceived decision difficulty. People will be asked to rate the perceived decision difficulty of the decision they described. According to previous reasoning, people with an intermediate level of moral identity are more likely to experience conflict and perceived decision difficulty if the decision contains moral-related components. We therefore expect that the level of perceived decision difficulty for the moral/amoral decisions that people described may be contingent on their moral identity. Figure 1 presents the hypothetical model.
Hypothesis 2: Moral identity moderates the effect of decision type on perceived decision
difficulty in a curvilinear way. Specifically, (a) people with high and low moral identity experience lower perceived decision difficulty when they face moral decisions than amoral decisions; (b) people with intermediate moral identity experiences higher perceived decision difficulty when they face moral decisions than amoral decisions.
Figure 1. Hypothetical Model
Additional Analysis H2 H1 Decision Type (moral vs. amoral) Delay Condition
(delay vs. no-delay) Perceived Decision Difficulty Duration Delay
15 4 Method
4.1 Participants and design
For this study, we used a between subject experimental design with two conditions (decision: delay vs. no-delay). Two hundred and four participants (89 female; Agemean = 28.78, SD = 9.53)
participated in this online study through Prolific in exchange for 1.70 British pounds. The ethnicity of participants in the sample was diverse, but the majority was White / British White, which accounts for 80.9% of the whole sample (165 participants). About 60% participants (122 participants) received undergraduate or higher education and only 8.8% participants (18 participants) received a degree lower than high school. The study lasted for approximately 20 minutes.
4.2 Procedure
At the beginning of the online study, participants were provided with a brief introduction of the study. When participants accepted the terms, they could continue the survey. Participants’ moral identity was measured after the introduction page. To avoid the impact of answering moral identity scales on responses to later questions, we included two other personality traits measures – Core Self Evaluations Scale (12 items; Judge et al., 2003) and Need for Closure Scale (15 items; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) – after the Moral Identity Scale (10 items; Aquino & Reed, 2002). Then, participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (decision: delay vs. no-delay) and were asked to describe either a decision they delayed or a decision they did not delay. The manipulation for the two conditions read as follows:
Now, we would like you to think of a recent decision you had to make. It is important that this is a decision that [you could make immediately but you decided to delay / you could
16
Specifically, we refer to a situation in which you were aware of the fact that you had to make a decision, [but you decided not to do so immediately / and you decided not to
delay it]. This decision could be about choosing between doing one thing versus doing
another. Or it could be about doing something versus refraining from it.
To encourage participants to provide a concrete and clear description of their decision, we provided five extra bonus awards of 10 British pounds to participants who wrote a concrete and understandable decision. After the decision description, the study continued with a number of questions related to the decision participants described, such as perceived decision difficulty and delay duration. Then, participants are asked to report the two most salient alternatives in their decision (“Please recall the two most salient alternatives in your decision you described”) using two text entry questions. The two text entry questions were presented on one page. In the last part, we asked for some demographic information, such as gender, age, ethnic group, and education. After that, participants were debriefed and thanked before they were paid through Prolific system.
4.3 Measures
Description coding. Two independent judges coded decisions described by participants on
17 the alternative of going to cinema with friends). Another example of moral decision provided by participants was a choice between spending extra working hours on Friday to help a patient search for platelet match versus letting other colleagues do it in the next Monday morning. This decision was classified as a moral decision because one of the alternatives involved sacrificing one’s leisure time to help another person. A decision was classified as amoral if none of the alternatives involved explicit/implied information about benefit to another person at the cost of oneself or harm to another person in favor of one’s own benefits. Examples of amoral decision described by participants were, for instance, which phone to buy or which job/education program they would like to choose.
With the coding results from two independent judges, the inter-judge reliability was 0.85 (ICC,
p < 0.01, n = 196) and the inter-judge agreement was 0.81 (Cohen’s Kappa, p < 0.01, n = 196).
Disagreements were resolved through discussion. Of all decisions described by participants, 23.50% were classified as moral decision (coded as 1) and 76.50% were classified as amoral decision (coded as 0).
Moral identity. The degree to which people's self-concepts center on moral traits was measured
by a 10-item moral identity scale (a = 0.75) developed by Aquino and Reed (2002). Participants were presented with nine moral terms (e.g., generous, helpful and honest) and asked to visualize the kind of person who has these traits. Then, they were asked to indicate to what extent they agreed with the 10 statements (e.g., I strongly desire to have these characteristics) using a 7-ponit scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scores of the 10 statements were averaged and standardized for each participant.
Perceived decision difficulty. Following Hanselmann and Tanner (2008), we measured
18 described?”. Participants answered this questions on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all difficult) to 5 (extremely difficult).
Manipulation check. The time duration between participant being confronted with the decision
for the first time and finally making the decision was collected as manipulation check. Delay duration was transformed into hours. For instance, if the delay duration was 2 days, then it was transformed into 48 hours.
5 Results 5.1 Preliminary analysis
I excluded data from seven participants in the following analyses as they failed to describe a decision (6 participants) or skipped many key questions (1 participants). Besides, we detected one outlier based on delay duration and excluded it in the analysis. The outlier was in no-delay condition but it had the largest value of delay duration. The delay duration for the outlier was 61320 hours (about 7 years). Therefore, it was deleted, which results in the final sample size of 196. We firstly conducted a correlation analysis for all variables in this study. Means, standard deviations, and correlations for variables were presented in Table 1.
19 assigned to the delay condition. Also, moral identity was strongly correlated with decision type (moral vs. amoral), which implied that people with a high moral identity were more likely to describe a moral decision compared with people with low moral identity.
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics and Correlationsa (n=196)
Mean S.D. 1 2 3 4 5
1 Delay Conditionb 0.52 0.50
1.00 2 Perceived Decision Difficulty 3.36 1.02 0.08
1.00 (0.27) 3 Moral Identityc 5.14 0.73 0.15 0.15 1.00 (0.03) (0.04) 4 Decision Typed 0.24 0.43 -0.09 0.07 0.18 1.00 (0.21) (0.36) (0.01) 5 Delay Duration 837.11 2554.88 0.21 0.15 0.01 0.01 1.00 (0.004) (0.03) (0.85) (0.90)
a. P value for correlations are shown in brackets.
b. Condition is a dummy variable, with 1 representing for delay condition and 0 representing for no-delay condition. c. The mean and S.D. for moral identity were calculated before moral identity was standardized.
d. Decision type is a dummy variable, with 1 representing for moral decision and 0 representing for amoral decision.
As a manipulation check, we examined whether delay duration in two conditions were significantly different. Although according to Table 1, a significant link between delay duration and delay condition (delay vs. no-delay) was identified, we conducted One-way ANOVA to further test the between-group differences for delay duration (see Table 2).
Table 2. Descriptive statistics comparison between delay (n = 101) and no delay conditions (n = 95)
Variables Condition Mean S.D. Min. Max. F (1, 194) Sig.
Decision Typea No delay 0.27 0.45 0.00 1.00
1.56 0.21
Delay 0.20 0.40 0.00 1.00
Perceived Decision Difficulty No delay 3.27 1.06 1.00 5.00
0.02 0.88
Delay 3.44 0.97 1.00 5.00
Moral Identity No delay 5.03 0.70 3.20 6.70
4.58 0.03
Delay 5.25 0.74 3.40 6.80
Delay Duration No delay 294.97 539.12 1.00 2688.00
8.63 0.004 Delay 1347.05 3451.58 1.00 19080.00
a. Decision type is a dummy variable, with 1 representing for moral decision and 0 representing for amoral
20 A significant difference was found for delay duration between the two conditions. More specifically, the average delay duration was longer when participants were asked to describe a decision they delayed than when participants were asked to describe a decision they did not delay.
5.2 Main analysis
Delay/No-delay Condition and Decision Type. In hypothesis 1, we expected an inverted
U-shape moderation effect of moral identity on the relationship between delay/no-delay condition and decision type. Therefore, we conducted a hierarchical logistic regression using equation (a) to examine the curvilinear interaction with 3 variables.
I entered the variables into the regression analysis in four steps: (1) delay/no-delay condition and moral identity as independent variables; (2) the two-way interaction between delay/no-delay condition and moral identity; (3) squared moral identity as curvilinear measure; and (4) the interaction between squared moral identity and delay/no-delay condition. Table 3 summarizes the results. Following Zhou et al. (2009) and Cohen et al. (2003), we focused on interpreting the DR2 for each step rather than coefficients in the final step as interaction may
potentially cause unstable coefficients due to multicollinearity. 𝑌 = 𝑏$+ 𝑏&𝑋 + 𝑏(𝑀 + 𝑏*𝑀(+ 𝑏
+𝑋𝑀 + 𝑏-𝑋𝑀(+ 𝑒/ (a)
Y: Decision type (moral decision vs. amoral decision) X: Condition (delay vs. no-delay)
M: Moral identity
𝑏0 (where j = 1, 2 …, 7): coefficient for variables 𝑒/: error term for this equation
21 delay/no-delay condition and decision type (r = -0.09, n = 196, p = 0.21). Since in this study, moral identity was surprisingly correlated with both delay/no-delay condition and decision type, the results after controlling of moral identity may better reflect the true relationship between delay/no-delay condition and decision type. In step 1, moral identity was positively related to decision type, which meant that the higher people’s moral identity was the more likely they describe a moral decision than an amoral decision when they were asked to describe a decision they made before.
Table 3. Summary of Curve Linear Regression Resultsa (DV: Decision Typeb)
Model B S.E. Wald Sig. Exp(B) DR2 Dc2 Sig.
Step1 0.07 9.76 0.01 Delay Conditionc 0.61 0.36 2.91 0.09 1.83 Moral Identity 0.51 0.19 7.63 0.01 1.67 Step2 0.003 0.33 0.56 Delay Condition 0.66 0.37 3.13 0.08 1.94 Moral Identity 0.41 0.25 2.70 0.10 1.51 Condition*Moral Identity 0.22 0.38 0.33 0.57 1.24 Step3 <0.001 0.08 0.78 Delay Condition 0.67 0.38 3.15 0.08 1.95 Moral Identity 0.41 0.26 2.62 0.11 1.51 Condition*Moral Identity 0.25 0.40 0.39 0.53 1.29 Moral Identity^2 -0.04 0.16 0.08 0.78 0.96 Step4 0.01 1.09 0.30 Delay Condition 0.44 0.44 0.99 0.32 1.55 Moral Identity 0.42 0.25 2.92 0.09 1.52 Condition*Moral Identity 0.44 0.50 0.78 0.38 1.56 Moral Identity^2 0.10d 0.20 0.23 0.64 1.10 Condition*Moral Identity^2 -0.35 0.35 1.01 0.32 0.71
a. R2 for total equation is 0.08, c2(5) = 11.26, p = 0.05, N = 196 b. Decision type, 1 is moral decision and 0 is amoral decision. c. Condition, 1 is delay condition and 0 is no-delay condition.
d. The sudden change of the coefficient at the final step may indicate some degree of multicollinearity. One should
focus on interpreting the significance of the DR2 associated with each step rather than on interpreting the regression
coefficients at the final step.
22 identity was identified. The addition of the quadratic effect of moral identity (step 3) did not bring significant change to the model (DR2 < 0.01, Dc2 = 0.08, p = 0.78). After we entered the
three-way interaction at step 4, the changes in DR2 was still not significant (DR2 = 0.01, Dc2 =
1.09, p = 0.30). Therefore, no curve linear interaction was found. These results suggested that overall people were more likely to recall a moral decision than an amoral decision when people were asked to describe a decision that they delayed. And people’s moral identity had no significant effect in this relationship. The results therefore did not support hypothesis 1.
Decision Type and Perceived Decision Difficulty. In hypothesis 2, we expected an inverted
U-shape moderation effect of moral identity on the relationship between decision type (moral vs. amoral) and perceived decision difficult. To test this, we conducted a hierarchical curvilinear regression with four variables using equation (b):
𝑌 = 𝑏$ + 𝑏&𝑋 + 𝑏(𝑀 + 𝑏*𝑀(+ 𝑏
+𝑋𝑀 + 𝑏-𝑋𝑀(+ 𝑏1𝑊 + 𝑒/ (b)
Y: Perceived decision difficulty
X: Decision type (moral decision vs. amoral decision) M: Moral identity
W: Condition (delay vs. no-delay)
𝑏0 (where j = 1, 2 …, 7): coefficient for variables
𝑒/: error term for this equation
We entered the variables into the regression analysis at five steps: (1) delay condition (delay vs. no-delay) as a control variable; (2) decision type and moral identity; (3) the two-way interaction between decision type and moral identity; (4) squared moral identity as curvilinear measure; and (5) the interaction between squared moral identity and decision type. Table 4 summarizes the results.
two-23 way interaction was included (Step 3). In step 3, the inclusion of the two-way interaction lead to a marginal significant improvement to the model (DR2 = 0.04, DF = 3.14, p = 0.08), which
implied the existing of a two-way interaction between decision type and moral identity.
Table 4. Summary of Curve Linear Regression Resultsa (DV: Perceived decision difficulty)
Model B S.E. t Sig. DR2 DF Sig.
Step1 0.08 1.25 0.27 Delay Conditionb 0.16 0.15 1.12 0.27 Step2 0.09 2.13 0.12 Delay Condition 0.13 0.15 0.89 0.38 Decision Typec 0.11 0.17 0.66 0.51 Moral Identity 0.13 0.08 1.78 0.08 Step3 0.04 3.14 0.08 Delay Condition 0.12 0.15 0.79 0.43 Decision Type 0.04 0.18 0.21 0.83 Moral Identity 0.07 0.08 0.79 0.43
Decision Type*Moral Identity 0.31 0.18 1.78 0.08
Step4 <0.001 <0.001 0.99
Delay Condition 0.12 0.15 0.79 0.43
Decision Type 0.04d 0.18 0.21 0.83
Moral Identity 0.07 0.09 0.78 0.44
Decision Type*Moral Identity 0.31 0.18 1.70 0.09
Moral Identity^2 0.001 0.06 0.02 0.99
Step5 0.03 2.48 0.12
Delay Condition 0.10 0.15 0.66 0.51
Decision Type 0.25d 0.22 1.11 0.27
Moral Identity 0.08 0.09 0.92 0.36
Decision Type*Moral Identity 0.43 0.20 2.17 0.03
Moral Identity^2 0.04 0.06 0.63 0.53
Decision Type*Moral Identity^2 -0.25 0.16 -1.58 0.12 a. R2 for total equation is 0.24, F(6, 189) = 1.87, p < 0.09, N = 196
b. Condition, 1 is delay condition and 0 is no-delay condition. c. Decision type, 1 is moral decision and 0 is amoral decision.
d. The sudden change of the coefficient at the final step may indicate some degree of multicollinearity.
One should focus on interpreting the significance of the DR2 associated with each step rather than on
interpreting the regression coefficients at the final step.
In step 4, the addition of the quadratic number of moral identity did not bring significant change (DR2 < 0.01, DF = 0.00, p = 0.99). After we entered the three-way interaction in step 5, the
24 0.12). We plotted the moderation effect of moral identity in Figure 2. No curvilinear relationship was found. Therefore, hypothesis 2 was not supported.
Figure 2. Inverted U-shape Moderation Effect of Moral Identity Note: High/low moral identity is moral identity +/- 1 SD
However, the marginal significant interaction effect in step 3 suggest the existence of a linear moderation effect of moral identity. Based on the results in step 3, Figure 3 was drawn. According to Figure 3, the effect of decision type on perceived decision difficulty were influenced by moral identity.
Figure 3. Linear Moderation Effect of Moral Identity Note: High/low moral identity is moral identity +/- 1 SD
To further explore the linear moderation effect of moral identity, simple slope tests were conducted. The results of simple slop tests indicated that, for high moral identifiers, no
2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 Amoral Moral PE R C IE V E D D E C ISI O N D IFFI U C L T Y DECISION TYPE
HIGH Moral Identity MEAM Moral Identity LOW Moral Identity
2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 Amoral Moral PE R C IE V E D D E C ISI O N D IFFI U C L T Y DECISION TYPE
25 significant effect was found between decision type and perceived decision difficulty (B = 0.35,
t = 1.61, p = 0.11). Similarly, for low moral identifiers, decision type had no significant effect
on perceived decision difficulty (B = -0.28, t = -0.99, p = 0.33).
Therefore, according to the results, the effect of decision type on perceived decision difficulty seemed to contingent on moral identity. Moral decisions seemed to be more difficult for high moral identifiers than amoral decisions, while low moral identifiers seemed to find that moral decisions were easier. Given that the interaction was only marginal significant and the simple slope tests for high and low moral identity were neither significant, the results could not ensure the existence of the association between decision type and perceived decision difficulty under different level of moral identity.
5.3 Additional analyses -- Moderated mediation effect of perceived decision difficulty According to the previous analyses, the results in Table 3 (Step 1) suggested a marginal main effect of recalled decision delay on decision type, which implies that delayed decisions are more likely to be moral decisions than no-delayed decisions. Besides, although no significant curve linear moderation effect was found, results suggested that the relationship between decision type and moral identity seemed to depend on moral identity. To further explore whether the perceived decision difficulty may have caused decision delay, we adopted delay duration as one indicator of delay behaviors. Delay duration is the length of delay. If there was a significant moderated mediation effect of perceived decision difficulty on delay duration, it could provide further support for the hypothetical model presented in Figure 1.
26 was found for decision type (B = 173.05, t = 0.39, p = 0.70) or moral identity (B = -82.81, t = -0.40, p = 0.69). The moderation effect of moral identity was not significant (B = 94.56, t = 0.21, p = 0.83), which suggested moral identity did not moderated the direct relationship between decision type and delay duration.
Second, we conducted a regression analysis using PROCESS 2.16.3 (Hayes, 2012) to test the moderated mediation model. The regression consisted of 5 variables: delay duration as dependent variable, decision type as independent variable, moral identity as moderator, perceived decision difficulty as mediator, and delay/no-delay condition as a control variable. We used 1000 bootstrap samples and set the confidence level as 90%1. Below were the results of the analyses.
Moderation model. This sub-model (R2 = 0.04, F = 2.18, p = 0.07) contained four variables
except for delay duration. Perceived decision difficult was dependent variable in this model. Given that the four variables used in this model are exactly the same as the model in table 4 step 3, the results of the moderation model were the same as that in table 4 step 3. No main effect was found for decision type and moral identity. A marginal significant interaction effect of decision type and moral identity on perceived decision difficulty was identified (B = 0.31, t = 1.77, p = 0.08). Referring back to Figure 3 and the results of simple slope tests, the effect of decision type on perceived decision difficulty was not significant for high moral identifiers (B = 0.35, t = 1.61, p = 0.11) and low moral identifiers (B = -0.28, t = -0.99, p = 0.33). However, although the results of simple slop tests were not significant, the variance went in the direction that a moral type was more difficult for high moral identifiers and was easier for low moral identifiers.
1
27
Direct effect model. This sub-model examined whether perceived decision difficulty and
decision type had effect on delay duration (R2 = 0.06, F = 4.20, p = 0.01). The results were presented in Table 5. A marginal significant effect of perceived decision difficulty on delay duration was found (B = 342.31, t = 1.93, p = 0.06), which indicated that the more difficulty people perceived, the longer time people delayed. There was no direct effect of decision type on delay duration (B = 106.27, t = 0.25, p = 0.80).
Table 5. Summary of Regression Results (DV: Delay Duration)
Variables B S.E. t Sig.
Delay Conditiona 1004.68 359.25 2.80 0.01 Decision Typeb 106.27 423.21 0.25 0.80 Perceived Decision Difficulty 342.31 176.97 1.93 0.06 a. Condition, 1 is delay condition and 0 is no-delay condition.
b. Decision type, 1 is moral decision and 0 is amoral decision.
Moderated Mediation. With regards to the overall moderated mediation effect, a marginal
significant moderated mediation effect was found (Index of Moderated Mediation = 107.54,
S.E. = 95.17, BootLLCI = 4.81, BootULCI = 376.54). More specifically, for people with low
moral identity, there was no mediated effect of perceived decision difficulty on the relationship between decision type and delay duration (B = -94.57, BootLLCI = -441.29, BootULCI = 65.76). For people with high moral identity, there was a marginal significant positive mediated effect of perceived decision difficulty on the relationship between decision type and delay duration (B = 120.51, BootLLCI = 3.11, BootULCI = 383.26). In other words, high moral identifiers may delay longer for moral decisions than amoral decisions, and the longer delay duration might be caused by the increase of perceived decision difficulty. The effect of perceived decision difficulty was not found for low moral identifiers.
28 With this research, we expected to find an inverted U-shape moderation effect of moral identity. Specifically, moral decisions were expected to be especially difficult and more likely to be delayed for intermediate moral identifiers than high/low moral identifiers. Although the results fail to prove the existence of an inverted U-shape moderation effect of moral identity, this research provides several other interesting findings, which we will discuss as following with detail.
6.1 Decision type and decision delay
In this research, we find that the type of decision (moral vs. amoral) people recalled is directly influenced by people’s moral identity. The higher people’s moral identity is, the more likely that they recall a moral decision. We also find that asking people to recall a delayed decision increases the likelihood that people recall a moral decision (comparing to amoral decision). And this is the opposite when people were asked to recall a decision they did not delay. In the first hypothesis, we expected that people’s moral identity impacted the relationship between a (no-)delayed decision people were asked to describe and the type of decision (moral vs. amoral) people recalled. However, we find no significant influence of moral identity on this relationship. Therefore, the first hypothesis is not confirmed.
29 influenced. Therefore, further research could be conducted to replicate the experiment and examine the relationship further.
It is also possible that the effect of moral identity may not be so effective when the relationship between decision type and decision delay are tested in a reversing way. In this research, decision delay was given as a criterion of recalling past decisions, and, afterwards, the recalled decisions were coded into either moral or amoral categories. The information processing of recalling a delayed decision differs from the information processing in real-time decision-making. In real-time decision making, people often first know the decision type and then decide whether to delay the decision based on their moral identity and the specific decision context. The role of moral identity in recalling a decision and making a decision might be different, which could be the reason for the non-significant moderation effect of moral identity. Therefore, further research could investigate the relationship between decision type and decision delay in a more straightforward way, such as using scenarios or real-time decisions in experiments.
30 6.2 Moderation effect of moral identity
Another finding of this paper is that the relationship between decision type (moral vs. amoral) and perceived decision difficulty seems to depend on people’s moral identity. Specially, moral decisions might be more difficult for high moral identifiers but easier for low moral identifiers. However, the evidence we found in our data only suggest a roughly “trend”. Therefore, any interpretation based on this finding should be with caution. Since no significant effect is found for the curvilinear interaction of moral identity, hypothesis 2 is not confirmed.
Although the linear interaction of moral identity is only marginal, it suggests that a moral decision might not be equally difficult for everyone. Instead, the perceived decision difficulty for a moral decision might be contingent on moral identity. In previous literature, the perceived decision difficulty for moral decisions are suggested as either more difficult (e.g., Baron & Spranca, 1997) or easier (e.g., Hanselmann & Tanner, 2008) than amoral decisions. The finding of this research suggests that moral decisions might be more difficult for high moral identifiers but might be easier for low moral identifiers. This finding appeals further research to consider the effect of personality traits on moral decision delay and provides a possibility for researchers to reconciles the inconsistency in the existing literature, which contributes to the understanding of perceived decision difficulty in moral decision-making.
One possible explanation for the finding is related to the temptation of self-interested alternatives in moral decisions. People have the impulse to fulfill their self-interest (Miller, 2001). When facing a moral decision, people have to regulate their impulse and resist the temptation of the self-interested alternative to make a morally right decision (Baumeister, 2002; Gino et al., 2011).
31 because they have strong tempting of choosing either of the alternative (moral alternative vs. self-interested alternative). Existing literature also proves that when the temptation of alternatives is similar, people experience more decision difficulty (Tversky & Shafir, 1992; Rolls et al., 2010).
As for low moral identifiers, when the temptation of the self-interest alternative is high, it is even easier for them to decide when facing a moral decision because the self-interested alternative is the obviously better option for them. Under this situation, low moral identifiers experience less perceived decision difficulty when facing moral decisions because of the low conflict between moral alternative and the self-interest alternative.
It is might be the case that when people are asked to recall a past decision, people are more likely to recall a moral decision that is memorable or difficult, which causes the increase of the overall tempting of self-interested alternatives that people described during the experiment. Therefore, because of the high temptation of self-interested alternatives, moral decisions are more difficult for high moral identifiers but easier for low moral identifiers. Also, because not all participants reported a decision with a tempting self-interested alternative, the linear interaction effect of moral identity was only marginal significant.
Given that the tempting of the self-interest alternative in moral decisions can change the conflict level of a decision, future research could investigate the moderation effect of moral identity with the consideration of the temptation level. Different experimental design should be used in order to control for the temptation level of self-interested alternative.
6.3 Moderated mediation modal for delay duration
32 More specifically, for high moral identifiers, decision type (moral vs. amoral) influences delay duration through influencing perceive decision difficulty. But this effect was not found for low moral identifiers.
The mediation effect of perceived decision difficulty is only found for high moral identifiers, which indicates that only for high moral identifiers, perceived decision difficulty can be the reason for decision delay in moral decision-making. For low moral identifiers, they delay their decision not because they find the decision is difficult. Therefore, future research should investigate the mechanism of decision delay in moral decision-making for low moral identifiers. And given that the mediation effect of perceived decision difficulty for high moral identifiers was only marginal, it still requires further tests and replications.
The finding about the relationship between perceived decision difficulty and delay duration adds to decision delay literature by suggesting the effect of decision difficulty on the length of decision delay. Although previous literature has proved the positive relationship between perceived decision difficulty and the possibility to delay (Tversky & Shafir, 1992; Dhar, 1997a; Luce, 1998; Anderson, 2003), they didn’t investigate the relationship between perceived decision difficulty and the length of delay. This finding adds to previous literature by suggesting that perceived decision difficulty is also positively related to delay duration. The higher perceived decision difficulty, the longer time people delay for a certain decision.
6.4 Practical Implications
33 or decrease the tempting of self-interested alternatives. For instance, when describing a moral decision (e.g., donation), organizations could relate the donation behavior closely to the acquiring of a positive self-image and the positive consequences for other people, which may to some extent increase the tempting of moral alternatives. Organizations could also decrease the tempting of self-interested alternatives by relating the self-interested alternatives with the negative consequences on others (e.g., if people do not donate, some young children will starve).
According to this paper, although low moral identifiers may also delay moral decisions, their delay might not be caused by perceived decision difficulty. It is possible that low moral identifiers just do not want to think about moral decisions. Therefore, to promote moral behavior for low moral identifiers, using moral option as the default option might be helpful. In this way, even when people do not want to think about the decision or try to avoid making the decision, their default option is still a moral one. The effect of changing the default option in promoting moral decisions has been proved to be effective, especially for promoting donation behaviors (Johnson & Goldstein, 2004; Davidai et al., 2012).
6.5 Limitations and future research
Several limitations in the paper are identified. First, moral identity in our experiment is accidentally correlated with the manipulated variable (delay/no-delay condition). Because of this, in our analyses, we include delay/no-delay condition as a control variable for almost all model we tested. However, although we have controlled for delay/no-delay condition, it is not the ideal situation for testing the hypotheses. Therefore, further research could be conducted to replicate the experiment to further examine the reliability of the findings in this paper.
34 Besides, some results in this paper can only prove a correlation rather than a causal relationship (e.g., the moderation effect of moral identity on perceived decision difficulty), further research should be conducted to examine the causal effect of the relationship.
This paper focuses on the role of moral identity for decision delay in moral decisions, but moral identity may not be the only personality traits that could influence delay behavior in moral decision making. Other characteristics, such as moral disengagement (Moore et al., 2012; Bandura, 1999), may also influence the decision delay mechanism. Further research can look into the other boundary conditions for decision delay in moral decision-making.
The current paper investigates the effect of decision type on decision delay behavior but does not examine the consequences of delay. Since existing literature has reported that decision delay may lead to the change of one’s decision (Bastardi & Shafir, 1998), it is worth investigating the consequences of decision delay for moral decision-making.
7 Conclusion
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