Sacred Values? The Effect of Information on Attitudes toward Payments for Human Organs

2015 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
pp. 361-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio J. Elias ◽  
Nicola Lacetera ◽  
Mario Macis
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Price Mechanism ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
Potential Efficiency

Are attitudes about morally controversial (and often prohibited) market transactions affected by information about their costs and benefits? We address this question for the case of payments for human organs. We find in a survey experiment with US residents (N=3,417) that providing information on the potential efficiency benefits of a regulated price mechanism for organs significantly increased support for payments from a baseline of 52 percent to 71 percent. The survey was devised to minimize social desirability biases in responses, and additional analyses validate the interpretation that subjects were reflecting on the case-specific details provided, rather than just reacting to any information.

Organ Vouchers and Barter Markets: Saving Lives, Reducing Suffering, and Trading in Human Organs

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 503-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Organ Procurement ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Voucher Program ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
Transplantation System ◽  
The Right ◽  
Voucher System ◽  
Care Costs

AbstractThe essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy explore an innovative voucher program for encouraging kidney donation. Discussions cluster around a number of central moral and political/theoretical themes: (1) What are the direct and indirect health care costs and benefits of such a voucher system in human organs? (2) Do vouchers lead to more effective and efficient organ procurement and allocation or contribute to greater inequalities and inefficiencies in the transplantation system? (3) Do vouchers contribute to the inappropriate commodification of human body parts? (4) Is there a significant moral difference between such a voucher system and a market in human organs for transplantation? This paper argues that while kidney vouchers constitute a step in the right direction, fuller utilization of market-based incentives, including, but not limited to, barter exchanges (e.g., organ exchanges, organ chains, and organ vouchers), would save more lives and further reduce human suffering.

From mutualism to moral transcendence

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-82
Author(s):  
Scott Atran
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
Rational Commitment

AbstractBaumard et al. attribute morality to a naturally selected propensity to share costs and benefits of cooperation fairly. But how does mundane mutualism relate to transcendent notions of morality critical to creating cultures and civilizations? Humans often make their greatest exertions for an idea they form of their group. Primary social identity is bounded by sacred values, which drive individuals to promote their group through non-rational commitment to actions independently of likely risks and rewards.

Beyond the Polemics on the Market

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Price Mechanism ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Multiple Markets ◽  
Rational Calculation ◽  
Social Arrangements ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter examines some of the recent interdisciplinary attempts to develop theoretical alternatives to purely economic models of the market. The very definition of the market is at stake. In contrast to the neoclassical assumption of the market as a universal and exclusive form of economic arrangement, market revisionists define the market as one among many different possible social arrangements, such as barter or gift exchange, that involve economic processes. The market is thus one institutionalized type of social relations involving consumption, production, and exchange. Its essence is the rational calculation of costs and benefits and the regulation of exchange by the price mechanism. The chapter argues that the “multiple markets” model represents the most useful alternative to the neoclassical paradigm of the market.

scholarly journals The Distributional Survey Experiment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Gilgen
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Social Desirability ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Social Desirability Bias ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Natural Manner ◽  
Justice Research ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Trade Offs

What is a just allocation of goods for whom, when and why? Given that the answer to these questions involve need, merit and equality considerations and call for a multidimensional approach that takes individual, contextual and situational factors into account, we are in need of efficient methods designed to help tackle the complexity. The main aim of this contribution is to introduce the distributional survey experiment (DSE), which was developed precisely for that purpose and captures the nature of the problem of distributional justice by accounting for the trade-offs that individuals are forced to make when allocating scarce resources. The DSE is a new survey experiment that measures people’s justice attitudes in as direct and natural manner as possible, while minimising problems of social desirability bias. This paper focuses on showing and comparing three possible methods for analysing the data from the DSE and discussing its potential for distributive justice research.

Vote Overreporting and a Survey Experiment: The Case of the Taiwan National Elections

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (01) ◽  
pp. 1650001 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHUNG-LI WU ◽  
XIAOCHEN SU
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Social Desirability ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Theoretical Examination ◽  
Control Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Memory Failure

The misreporting of voter turnout, prevalent in survey data across the world, has received comparatively little attention anywhere apart from in some western countries. This study evaluates the use of questions specifically designed to mitigate the level of vote overreporting for the 2012 national elections in Taiwan. After a theoretical examination of social desirability and memory failure, the two primary causes of misreporting, we present the results of a split-question experiment featuring two questions designed to mitigate overreporting. While the findings reveal that the experiment with changes to the questionnaire context was far from successful because of a low reported turnout for the control question, it is the case that, as hypothesized, reported voter turnout differs vastly among the different questions, with the question mitigating for social desirability resulting in higher figures than that for memory failure.

Law as a Contested Commodity

Law for Sale ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 125-174
Author(s):  
Johanna Stark
Keyword(s):  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Regulatory Competition ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Price Mechanism ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
Global Law ◽  
Normative Considerations

Several types of philosophical arguments have been offered as to why some things should not, or cannot, consistently be bought and sold, such as human organs, Nobel Prizes, or democratic votes. Starting from the debate about so-called ‘contested commodities’, this chapter deals with the commodification of law itself and discusses whether philosophical criticism regarding the commodification of certain types of goods and practices is applicable in the context of law as a product as well. The argument’s starting point is that regulatory competition leads to the law being perceived as a commodity that is subject to the market mechanism. It proceeds with a discussion of the premise that the market mechanism comes with its own kind of valuation, with the price mechanism serving as the primary indicator of value. Criticism of commodification and commercialization is often based on the perception that market valuation tends to be dominant over other evaluative standards, sometimes ‘crowding out’ considerations that cannot be directly translated into market vocabulary. Under conditions of regulatory competition, there is a case to be made that some of the normative considerations, the values and principles that underlie legal rules would in case of conflict be ‘crowded out’ by the imperatives of success in a global law market.

scholarly journals The price of your soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1589) ◽  
pp. 754-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Berns ◽  
Emily Bell ◽  
C. Monica Capra ◽  
Michael J. Prietula ◽  
Sara Moore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Representation ◽  
Potential Outcomes ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Deontological Theory ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
Material Benefits ◽  
Increased Activity

Sacred values, such as those associated with religious or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life, and individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values in exchange for material benefits. Deontological theory suggests that sacred values are processed based on rights and wrongs irrespective of outcomes, while utilitarian theory suggests that they are processed based on costs and benefits of potential outcomes, but which mode of processing an individual naturally uses is unknown. The study of decisions over sacred values is difficult because outcomes cannot typically be realized in a laboratory, and hence little is known about the neural representation and processing of sacred values. We used an experimental paradigm that used integrity as a proxy for sacredness and which paid real money to induce individuals to sell their personal values. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that values that people refused to sell (sacred values) were associated with increased activity in the left temporoparietal junction and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behaviour through the retrieval and processing of deontic rules and not through a utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document