Unawareness of Self-interest Bias in Moral Judgments of Others’ Behavior

Abstract

Previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014) showed that self-interest biases moral perception of others’
unethical actions. Moreover, affective changes in attitudinal responses towards the perpetrator of an immoral act drives the bias. In the present studies, we attempted to answer the question whether people are aware of the self-interest bias in their judgments of others’ behavior. We conducted two experiments showing that moral judgments of verbally described and imagined actions were dominated by norms rather than self-interest (Study 1) and that people were not aware that self-interest distorted their moral judgment (Study 2). The unawareness of the self-interest bias among the participants was attributable to omission of their own emotional responses when forecasting their moral judgments. We discuss the importance of emotions presence in studies on moral judgments as well as contribution of the present research to the intuitionist approach to moral judgment.

Full text

Konrad Bocian *
Bogdan Wojciszke **
Original Papers
Polish Psychological Bulletin
2014, vol 45(4), 411-417
DOI - 10.2478/ppb-2014-0050
Moral judgments play a paramount role in social
life. Moral persons are lionized and held in high esteem
while immoral villains are despised and rejected. When
an issue becomes a really important problem, the social
discourse on the issue quickly acquires moral undertones.
Most actions, which are performed frequently or in the high
intensity, tends to be seen as justified and morally good.
Contemporary social cognition researchers distinguish
between two fundamental dimensions of content – agency
(competence) and communion (warmth) – and morality
is a major component of communion, which is more
important of the two dimensions. A great deal of research
on social cognition shows that perceptions of individuals
(Abele & Wojciszke, 2014) and social groups (Leach,
Bilali & Pagliaro, 2013) is dominated by communal/moral
over agentic contents. Information on others’ morality
is typically more sought for than information on other
qualities; it is processed faster and exerts much greater
influence on attitudes and evaluations than other sorts
of information, even if balanced for their favorability
(positivity-negativity) (Wojciszke, 2010). No wonder then,
that for a long time moral judgment has been an important
object of psychological theorizing and research.
There are two distinct traditions in theorizing
about origins of moral judgments. According to an older,
rationalistic tradition (having roots in the philosophy of
Immanuel Kant) moral judgment involves thoughtful
reasoning heavily embedded in language and requires
time, effort and cognitive resources (e.g. Kohlberg,
1984; Thomson, 1990). According to a newer, intuitionist
tradition (having roots in the philosophy of David Hume)
moral judgment resembles perception rather than thinking
and involves affective intuitions (gut feelings of right or
wrong),which instantly and effortlessly appear in awareness
and require little time or cognitive resources (Haidt, 2001).
A variety of findings reviewed by Haidt and
Kesebir (2010) shows that moral judgments are typically
dominated by automatic intuitions over thoughtful
deliberations. For example, people make moral judgments
instantly (within a quarter of a second) and developmentally
before they acquire a full capacity to think in moral
terms (i.e. in infancy - Hamlin, Wynn& Bloom, 2007;
2010). Those instant perceptions are hard to inhibit or
change by conscious efforts and, therefore, frequently
remain unchanged by deliberations. Such judgments are
made without effort, intention and even when the judges
Unawareness of Self-interest Bias in Moral Judgments of
Others’ Behavior
Abstract: Previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014) showed that self-interest biases moral perception of others’
unethical actions. Moreover, affective changes in attitudinal responses towards the perpetrator of an immoral act drives
the bias. In the present studies, we attempted to answer the question whether people are aware of the self-interest bias in
their judgments of others’ behavior. We conducted two experiments showing that moral judgments of verbally described
and imagined actions were dominated by norms rather than self-interest (Study 1) and that people were not aware that
self-interest distorted their moral judgment (Study 2). The unawareness of the self-interest bias among the participants
was attributable to omission of their own emotional responses when forecasting their moral judgments. We discuss the
importance of emotions presence in studies on moral judgments as well as contribution of the present research to the
intuitionist approach to moral judgment.
Key words: self-interest; moral judgment; egotistic bias
* Konrad Bocian, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Campus, Polna 16/20, 81-745 Sopot, Poland; kbocian1@swps.edu.pl
** Bogdan Wojciszke, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Campus, Polna 16/20, 81-745 Sopot, Poland;
bwojciszke@swps.edu.pl.
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412 Konrad Bocian, Bogdan Wojciszke
cannot explain them. Changes in emotional states (such
as unrelated surge of joy or disgust) influence moral
judgments even when factual information about a judged
act is held constant. Such affective influences are stronger
in conditions where people lack proper information that
is relevant in a particular situation (Van den Bos, 2003).
Finally, impairments of brain areas related to emotions –
such as the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex – impair moral
judgments and healthy people showing low activation of
these areas tend to ignore deontological considerations
when solving moral dilemmas. Haidt and Kesebir (2010)
call this domination of intuitions over thoughts “intuitive
primacy but not dictatorship” (p. 801) and this primacy may
be well understood in terms of a dual process model of moral
judgment (Greene, 2007). According to this model, moral
judgment is a product of two processes – an automatically
arising intuition and a controlled deliberation which may
change this intuition. The major difference between the
two is that automatic processes operate constantly and
independently of the conditions, whereas controlled ones
operate only in generous conditions, when enough of time,
motivation and cognitive resources are available. Using
a process dissociation approach, Conway and Gawronski
(2013) showed directly that introducing cognitive load
selectively reduces operation of the controlled (but not
automatic) processes, while inducing empathy for a victim
increases operation of automatic processes with deliberative
processes remaining intact.
Because moral judgments contain a deliberative
component sometimes but comprise an automatic
component always, they are highly susceptible to egocentric
biases. This is because the automatic moral judgment
is typically affective in nature and involves a “good-
bad” response (although there are also exceptions to this
rule – e.g. an embodied gesture of the hand-over-heart
increases both moral judgment and moral behavior without
affective mediation – Parzuchowski & Wojciszke, 2014).
People automatically develop egocentric perceptions and
evaluations in line with an unwritten rule “what is good
or bad for me is generally good or bad” (Epley & Caruso,
2004). Continuing this line of reasoning we argue that
people are prone to the self-interest bias in moral judgments
of others. That is they perceive others’ counter-normative
behavior as immoral, but when the behavior in question
benefits perceivers (and leads to their positive affect)they
tend to evaluate this behavior in a more positive way up to
seeing it as moral. “This self-interest bias arises because:
(1) moral evaluations are automatically based on current
affective states and (2) affective responses to stimuli are
driven by their bearing on the perceivers’ self-interest, such
that the stimuli advancing self-interest lead to positive affect
and the stimuli frustrating self-interest lead to negative
affect” (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014, p. 4).
Present Hypotheses and Studies
In line with this reasoning on self-interest bias,
Bocian and Wojciszke (2014) showed in three studies
that others’ counter-normative behavior (breaking a rule
or cheating for money) leads the perceiver to much more
positive moral evaluations when he or she benefits materially
from this behavior compared to a situation where only the
perpetrator (the rule-breaker) benefits. The same studies
showed that this change of judgment is entirely mediated
by affective responses towards the perpetrator. A perpetrator
whose behavior benefits observers becomes well-liked by
them and this liking leads to heightened moral evaluations
of his behavior (though changes in general mood do not
serve as a mediator). Moreover, when observers are initially
induced to dislike the perpetrator, the whole mechanism is
being blocked, and the self-interest bias in moral judgment
of the perpetrator does not emerge.
In the present studies, we want to continue this
line of research attempting to answer the question whether
people are aware of the self-interest bias in their judgments
of others. Our previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014)
showed that the self-interest bias is driven by affective
changes in attitudinal responses towards the perpetrator of
an (immoral) act and it is well-known that such affective
changes can emerge and operate without conscious
awareness (Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Therefore, we predict
that people can be unaware that their judgments are biased
by their own interests, especially in the absence of de-
biasing pressures, such as accountability (Lerner & Tetlock,
1999) or self-awareness (Wicklund, 1975).
To test this prediction we performed two studies. In
first of them, we asked for moral evaluations of normative
or counter-normative actions, which advanced or dwarfed
interests of our participants (or other persons). Both actions
and interests were verbally described, and participants were
to imagine them. We reasoned that imagined interests may
induce only weak affective responses (if any) making the
moral judgment difficult to bias. Imagined norm-relevance,
however, should still guide moral judgment because the
latter is by definition about norms, whether imagined or
observed. So, we predicted that norm maintenance behavior
would lead to positive moral judgment, whereas norm-
breaking would lead to negative judgment, self- or other-
interests notwithstanding.
In second study, we arranged a situation in such
a way that some participants benefited financially from
rule-breaking by another person and other participants lost
financially because the person kept to the rule. These two
groups were called “experiencers” because they experienced
the gain or loss. Additionally, we recruited two other groups
of participants who only imagined one of these two situations
described to them in detail. Because, these two groups were
only to forecast their responses to an imaginary situation,
we called them “forecasters”. We predicted that moral
judgments of experiencers would follow their interests and
would be higher for those who experienced gain rather than
loss. We also predicted that moral judgments of forecasters
would not follow those interests. In effect, our hypotheses
were that in the gain situation forecasters would yield lower
moral evaluations than experiencers, whereas in the loss
situation, forecasters would yield higher evaluations than
experiencers.
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413
Unawareness of Self-interest Bias in Moral Judgments of Others’ Behavior
Study 1
In this study we presented our participants with
four short stories describing an allotment of some goods
which either adhered to norms of justice or broke such
norms and, at the same time, it either served or frustrated
interests of a specific person. The participants were asked
to imagine that they themselves were the persons or that
other (unknown) individuals identified by name were
the involved persons. After imaging each situation, the
participants were asked to evaluate each allotment decision
and to rate whether the goods were distributed in a morally
appropriate or inappropriate way.
Method
Participants. Sixty-four university students
participated (Mage = 22.06, SD = 4.70, 50 were women).
They were randomly divided into the self-interest and other-
interest groups of equal size.
Procedure and materials. Each participant
received four vignettes describing morally relevant actions
covering all combinations of a 2 (moral norm: maintained
vs. broken) x 2 (personal interest: advanced vs. dwarfed)
design. The four vignettes involved following actions: (a)
promoting an employee whose qualifications were better
or poorer than those of other candidates; (b) admitting for
an attractive and free program a student whose test results
were higher or lower than those of other candidates; (3)
allotting a fringe benefit (flat for free) to an employee who
qualified to a higher or lower degree than other employees;
(d) allotting an attractive internship to a student who was
more or less qualified than other candidates. Four versions
of each story were generated covering all combinations of
the norm by interest design and a Latin square was used to
vary the specific vignette content in a systematic way. In the
self-interest condition participants were asked to imagine
that they themselves were the specific persons involved. In
the other-interest condition the specific persons were given
common first names (Adam, Tom etc.)
Participants read the stories in a random order and
rated whether the goods in question were distributed in a
morally appropriate or inappropriate way. The seven-point
scale ranged from -3 (definitely inappropriate) to 0 (hard to
say, somewhat appropriate, somewhat inappropriate) to 3
(definitely appropriate).
Results and Discussion
Moral judgments were subjected to an analysis of
variance in a 2 (person involved: self vs. other) x 2 (moral
norm: maintained vs. broken) x 2 (interest: advanced vs.
dwarfed) design with repeated measures on the last two
factors. This analysis revealed a strong main effect of norm
F(1,62) = 85.62, p < .001, η² = .58, with judgments of norm
maintaining behaviors being generally positive (M = 0.61,
SD = 1.43) and much higher than judgments of norm-
breaking, which were generally negative (M = -1.14, SD =
1.48). There was no main effect of the interest, F(1,62) =
1.95, p = .17, ns, though an interaction between the norm
and interest appeared significant, F(1,62) = 13.88, p < .001,
η²= .18. As can be seen in Figure 1, the interaction meant
that the effect of behavior normativity on judgments was
more pronounced for actions dwarfing rather than serving
personal interests. Specifically, norm breaking led to more
negative judgments when the interest was dwarfed (M =
-1.56, SD = 1.38) rather than advanced (M = -0.72, SD =
1.49) and this difference was significant, t(63) = 3.47, p =
.001, d = .58. Similarly, judgments of norm maintenance
tended to be more positive when the interest was dwarfed
(M = 0.78, SD = 1.36) rather than advanced (M = 0.44,
SD = 1.59) although this this difference failed to reach
significance, t(63) = 1.46, p = .15.
Clearly, this data shows that moral judgments of
verbally described and imagined actions are dominated by
norms. Analyzes with t tests for one sample showed that
when a norm was broken, the action was condemned (i.e.
the judgment was significantly below 0) both when the
interest was dwarfed, t(63) = 9.07, p < .001, and when it
was advanced, t(63) = 3.87, p < .001. But when the norm
was maintained, the action was praised (i.e. the judgment
was significantly above 0) both when the interest was
frustrated, t(63) = 4.59, p < .001, and when it was advanced,
t(63) = 2.20, p = .032. Interests played only a secondary
role, moderating the effect of norms – the latter was more
pronounced for actions minimizing rather than serving
personal interests.
Importantly, the analysis revealed no triple
interaction between norms, interests and whose interests
were involved – the own (imagined) interest of the
participants or interests of other persons described in the
vignettes. In other words, the pattern depicted in Figure 1
kept both for self-interest and other-interest. That means
that people do not realize the self-interest bias in moral
judgment. Specifically, they do not know that when others’
counter-normative behavior benefits their own interests
moral judgments of this behavior become much more
lenient.
Figure 1. Moral judgments of actions which break or maintain social
norms while frustrating or advancing personal interests of involved
individuals (Study 1).
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414 Konrad Bocian, Bogdan Wojciszke
Study 2
This study aimed at showing within the same
design that people commit the self-interest bias (when
judging others’ norm-relevant behavior that is also relevant
to the judges’ interest) but do not realize committing the
bias when they are asked only to imagine others’ behavior.
In the already mentioned series of studies, Bocian and
Wojciszke (2014) found that participants judged counter-
normative behavior in a more lenient way when they
themselves gained from this behavior – compared to
participants who did not gain personally from it. We
borrowed and reanalyzed two conditions from Study 1 of
Bocian and Wojciszke (2014). One was a condition where
participants paid their fine for overdue books and another
was a condition where participants had their fine waived
by an arbitrary decision of a librarian. Because these two
groups actually experienced the loss or gain, respectively,
we call them here “experiencers”. Additionally we recruited
two new groups of “forecasters” for whom we described in
detail the situation of experiencers, asked them to imagine
themselves in this situation (of gain or loss) and to predict
their responses by answering the same questions that were
posed to experiencers.
We reasoned that if people realize committing the
self-interest bias, the responses of forecasters would follow
the responses of experiencers. That is, forecasters would
predict their moral judgment and liking of the librarian to be
higher when the librarian waived rather than imposed the fee
(i.e. when she acted for the participants’ interests, an effect
which Bocian and Wojciszke found for the experiencers).
However, if people do not realize the self-interest bias,
their forecasted responses would diverge from the actual
responses of experiencers and would not follow the interest-
induced difference between waiving and imposing the fee.
So, the main analyzes focused on comparing judgments of
the experiencers and forecasters in two conditions of gain
versus loss.
Method
Participants. Eighty-four undergraduate students
participated (73 women; mean age = 24.66 years). All
were approached when leaving their local library. Forty
participants came from two conditions borrowed from
Bocian and Wojciszke (2014, Study 1). At about the same
time, we also recruited 44 other students who served as
forecasters, that is they only imagined themselves in the
condition of gain or loss (to which they were allotted on a
random basis).
Procedure and materials. The study started when
a student, who had to pay a fine for overdue books, showed
up in the library. The librarian informed participants about
the amount of fine and then based on a random selection
either waived (Mgain = 15zł; SD = 12.53) or imposed the fine
Mloss = 12.1zł; SD = 8.42); the difference between the two
means was not significant, p = .396.
When the students left the library, they were
followed by a female confederate for three minutes and
then approached and asked to fill in a marketing department
evaluation survey concerning two University departments:
the library and the dean’s office (with a random order of
departments). Firstly participants evaluated the infrastructure
of departments (e.g. chairs, lights, speed of internet) and
then rated quality of the staff’s work (“imagine a person
with whom you had the latest contact”). Specifically,
participants rated on 7–point scales (1 = definitely not, 7
= definitely yes) how much they agreed that, in their work,
the employees were: efficient, fast, sensible, accurate,
capable and lazy and those adjectives were fillers for the
three items measuring moral evaluations: honest, fair, and
proper. Finally, at the end, students rated on a similar scale
(1 = strongly negative, 7 = strongly positive) their overall
attitudes towards the library and the dean’s office staff.
The forecasters were students who left the same
library. They were approached by the same confederate
and asked to fill in a questionnaire about imagination
improvement technics. On the front page participants were
informed that:
“The survey, which you hold in your hands,
concerns the ability to imagine hypothetical life situations.
Read carefully the story described on the following page
and as far as possible to imagine its parts: places, people,
situation, etc. After you read the story, we will ask you some
questions about it, so please visualize the story as best as
you can. Note that there are not correct answers, because
what matters to us most of all is what you think and feel
making an imagination of characterized story”.
On the next page, participants read a story in
the first person about the librarian whose behavior was
exactly the same as for experiencers. Dependently on the
experimental condition, half of the participants read that the
librarian behaved in the counter-normative way waiving the
fine, whereas the other half learnt that the librarian behaved
in a normative way imposing the due fine. This one element
(gain vs. loss) was the only difference between the two
stories.
When participants read the whole story, we
asked them to imagine that immediately after walking out
the library another student approached them and kindly
requested to take part in a brief survey concerning two
University departments: the library and the dean’s office
(the same as for experiencers). The entire survey was on
the next page with an instruction to “Fill the survey in a
way that you think you would have filled it after your fine
for overdue books was imposed (waived) by the librarian”.
After participants completed the survey the confederate
thanked them for their participation and walked away in
search of another person.
Moral ratings of the library and dean office
employees’ actions were averaged into a moral evaluation
index (Cronbach’s α = .86 and α = .93). The second
dependent measure was an overall liking measured with a
single item on a scale ranging from 1 to 7.
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415
Unawareness of Self-interest Bias in Moral Judgments of Others’ Behavior
Results and Discussion
Moral evaluations were subjected to a 2 x 2
analysis of variance with the self-interest (gain vs. loss) and
group (experiencers vs. forecasters) as between-participants
factors. This analysis revealed a significant interaction
between the two factors F(1,84) = 17.63, p < .001, η²=
.18, as illustrated in Figure 2. As expected, the forecasters
produced predictions of moral judgments which were far
from reality (i.e. the judgments of experiencers). In the gain
condition, the forecasters showed lower moral evaluations
of the librarian (M = 5.07, SD = 1.45) than experiencers
who actually gained from the librarian’s counter-normative
behavior (M = 6.22, SD = .80), t(40) = 3.09, p = .004, d
= .98. Importantly, an opposite pattern emerged in the
loss condition. This time the forecasters showed higher
moral evaluations (M = 6.11, SD = 0.80) than those of
experiencers (M = 5.30, SD = 1.02), t(40) = 2.86, p = .007,
d = .90. Neither of the main effects was significant – for the
self-interest p = .807, for the group p = .472. Of course, as
reported by Bocian and Wojciszke (2014), the experiencers
showed higher evaluations in the gain than loss condition.
A similar analysis of variance was conducted on the
overall attitude towards the librarian. The analysis revealed
no main effect of the group, p = .232. The main effect of
self-interest was significant F(1,84) = 6.20, p = .015, η² =
.07, indicating higher liking in the gain condition (M = 5.86,
SD = .90) than in the loss condition (M = 5.33, SD = 1.39).
However, interpretation of this effect was constrained by
the predicted group by interest interaction F(1,84) = 19.93;
p < .001, η² = .20. As can be seen in Figure 3, in the gain
condition the forecasters predicted that they would like
the librarian to a lesser degree (M = 5.50, SD = .86) than
she was actually liked by the experiencers (M = 6.25, SD
= .79), t(40) = 2.94; p = .005, d = .91. However, in the loss
condition the forecasters predicted to like the librarian more
(M = 5.95, SD = .95), than the experiencers actually did (M
= 4.65, SD = 1.50), t(31,63) = 3.34; p = .002, d = 1.03. This
pattern of results shows again that students from our sample
were poor forecasters of their judgments of others’ behavior
relevant for their own interests.
Study 2 confirms that people are lousy forecasters
of own responses to imagined situations compared to
responses of people who actually experience the same
situations. Specifically, they do not realize that self-
interest biases their moral judgments of norm-relevant
behavior in such a way that the judgments become higher
when the behavior in question advances their interests and
become lower when the behavior dwarves their interests.
Interestingly, our forecasters did not even realize that their
liking responses would have been influenced by the simple
self-interested logic – that people like well those who serve
their interest but dislike those who frustrate those interests.
Existing research suggests that the main reason for such
inaccurate predictions is that when people try to forecast
their future states or judgments they tend to forget about
own emotions dismissing them because these emotions are
absent during anticipation (though they are present in real
experience, cf. Wilson, Gilbert & Centerbar, 2003).
General Discussion
The results of the present two studies suggest that
people are aware that their moral judgments are guided by
norms, though they are not aware that their moral judgments
reflect also their own interests. Thus, they do not realize
the self-interest bias their judgments of others’ behavior. As
already discussed, Bocian and Wojciszke (2014) evidenced
this bias and showed that it is mediated by increases in
liking of the person who immorally acts in a way which
benefits the perceiver. Unawareness of the self-interest bias
is consistent with the affective nature of moral intuitions –
by definition people are always aware of their thoughtful
deliberations (concerning norms), but they may be unaware
of their affective responses and the ways the latter feed the
conscious thoughts (cf. Strack & Deutsch, 2004).
This results also corresponds with intuitionist
approach to moral judgments (Greene, 2007; Haidt, 2007)
showing that emotional intuitions (liking vs. disliking)
are underlying moral judgments as we have shown in
previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014). Thus, when
true emotions are missing, as in the present studies, we are
dealing with moral reasoning, which is a post-hoc structure
(Haidt, 2001; Wheatley & Haidt, 2005), rather than a proper
moral judgment.
Figure 2. Ratings of the librarian’s morality as a function of self-
interest and group conditions. Bars represent standard errors of the
mean (Study 2).
Figure 3. Liking of the librarian as a function of the self-interest and
group conditions. Bars represent standard errors of the mean (Study
2).
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416 Konrad Bocian, Bogdan Wojciszke
Yet another issue emerging from the present
studies concerns the validity of methods used to study
moral judgments. From the venerable Heinz-type dilemmas
studied by Kohlberg (1984) to classical trolley-type
dilemmas studied to discern between deontological and
utilitarian inclinations in moral decision making (Conway
& Gawronski, 2013) psychologists require from their
participants making moral judgments of imaginary behavior
of others. Although this dilemma methodology provided
many insights into moral judgments, the present results
clearly suggest some limitations of this methodology. The
validity of such methods seems to be constrained to the
operation of rational contributions to moral judgments.
Imaginary dilemmas are not useful to study automatic
(affective and associative) operations because people are
not aware of them and, therefore, cannot take them into
account when forecasting their moral judgments. Studying
judgments of real behaviors that concern the perceivers
personally seems to be a more fruitful method to study
these phenomena. However, this assumption needs to be
investigated more precisely.
The current research brings evidence that moral
judgment is guided by self-interest, but this mechanism is
oblivious for people. Thus, it contributes to a growing body
of research on intuitionist approach to moral judgments
(Greene, 2007; Haidt, 2007), moral hypocrisy (Batson,
Thompson, Seuferling, Whitney & Strongman, 1999;
Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007; 2008), cheating (Mazar, Amir
& Ariely, 2008; Shu, Gino & Bazerman, 2011) and ethical
actions of business leaders (Hoogervorst, De Cremer &
van Dijke, 2010). Furthermore, as mentioned at the outset,
Bocian and Wojciszke (2014) showed that perceiver’s
interests biased the moral recognition of other’s immoral
actions, and the present findings suggest that people are
absolutely unaware that self-interest distorts their moral
judgments. This underlines importance of emotions and
personal concerns when it comes to research on moral
opinions. It seems that only when we get real emotions
involved, we are capable to capture the true nature of moral
judgment since people make moral judgments instantly and
really fast: within 200 to 250 milliseconds (Van Berkum,
Holleman, Nieuwland, Otten & Murre, 2009).
We believe that self-interest bias, which is
opaque for people committing the bias, can be reduced by
accountability (Lerner& Tetlock, 1999), self-awareness
(Wicklund, 1975; Batson, Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein,
Kampf, andWilson), primes of social control such as a
pictureof human eyes (Bateson, Nettle& Roberts, 2006)
and probably by raising people awareness about the self-
interest bias and its underlying mechanism. These actions
could help us with creating environments more conducive
to moral behavior in everyday life.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Foundation
for Polish Science grant “MISTRZ”. We want to thank
Aleksandra Pawlowicz for her help in data gathering.
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