For contractualist accounts of morality, actions are moral if they correspond to what rational or reasonable agents would agree to do, were they to negotiate explicitly. This, in turn, often depends on each party's bargaining power, which varies with each party's stakes in the potential agreement and available alternatives in case of disagreement. If there is an asymmetry, with one party enjoying higher bargaining power than another, this party can usually get a better deal, as often happens in real negotiations. A strong test of contractualist accounts of morality, then, is whether moral judgments do take bargaining power into account. We explore this in five preregistered experiments (n = 3,025; U.S.-based Prolific participants). We construct scenarios depicting everyday social interactions between two parties in which one of them can perform a mutually beneficial but unpleasant action. We find that the same actions (asking the other to perform the unpleasant action or explicitly refusing to do it) are perceived as less morally appropriate when performed by the party with lower bargaining power, as compared to the party with higher bargaining power. In other words, participants tend to give more moral leeway to parties with better bargaining positions and to hold disadvantaged parties to stricter moral standards. This effect appears to depend only on the relative bargaining power of each party but not on the magnitude of the bargaining power asymmetry between them. We discuss implications for contractualist theories of moral cognition and the emergence and persistence of unfair norms and inequality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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道德判断对讨价还价能力很敏感。


对于契约主义的道德解释，如果行为符合理性或合理的代理人在明确谈判的情况下会同意做的事情，那么它们就是道德的。反过来，这通常取决于各方的讨价还价能力，该能力因各方在潜在协议中的利害关系以及出现分歧时的可用替代方案而异。如果存在不对称性，一方享有比另一方更高的议价能力，那么这一方通常可以获得更好的交易，这在实际谈判中经常发生。因此，对契约主义道德描述的一个有力测试是，道德判断是否确实考虑了讨价还价的能力。我们在五个预先注册的实验 （n = 3,025;美国的 Prolific 参与者）。我们构建了描述两方之间日常社交互动的场景，其中一方可以执行互惠互利但令人不快的动作。我们发现，与议价能力较高的一方相比，当谈判能力较低的一方执行相同的行为（要求对方执行令人不快的动作或明确拒绝执行）时，被认为在道德上不太合适。换句话说，参与者倾向于给谈判地位更好的政党更多的道德回旋余地，并要求弱势政党遵守更严格的道德标准。这种影响似乎只取决于每一方的相对讨价还价能力，而不取决于他们之间的讨价还价能力不对称的程度。我们讨论了对道德认知契约主义理论的影响，以及不公平规范和不平等的出现和持续存在。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。