Les économistes Armin Falk et Nora Szech publient ce mois-ci dans la revue Science un article intitulé « Morals and Markets » qui suggère que les relations marchandes tendent à réduire l’importance que les agents accordent aux valeurs morales. Voici l’abstract :
The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously. In contrast, for morally neutral consumption choices, differences between institutions are small.
Comme ce résumé l’indique, le résultat des auteurs provient d’une étude expérimentale. Je n’ai pas accès à l’article, mais en lisant ce compte-rendu, j’ai quelques doutes sur l’interprétation appropriée de cette étude :
« To study immoral outcomes, we studied whether people are willing to harm a third party in exchange to receiving money. Harming others in an intentional and unjustified way is typically considered unethical, » says Prof. Falk. The animals involved in the study were so-called « surplus mice », raised in laboratories outside Germany. These mice are no longer needed for research purposes. Without the experiment, they would have all been killed. As a consequence of the study many hundreds of young mice that would otherwise all have died were saved. If a subject decided to save a mouse, the experimenters bought the animal. The saved mice are perfectly healthy and live under best possible lab conditions and medical care.
A subgroup of subjects decided between life and money in a non-market decision context (individual condition). This condition allows for eliciting moral standards held by individuals. The condition was compared to two market conditions in which either only one buyer and one seller (bilateral market) or a larger number of buyers and sellers (multilateral market) could trade with each other. If a market offer was accepted a trade was completed, resulting in the death of a mouse. Compared to the individual condition, a significantly higher number of subjects were willing to accept the killing of a mouse in both market conditions. This is the main result of the study. Thus markets result in an erosion of moral values. « In markets, people face several mechanisms that may lower their feelings of guilt and responsibility, » explains Nora Szech. In market situations, people focus on competition and profits rather than on moral concerns. Guilt can be shared with other traders. In addition, people see that others violate moral norms as well.
Dans un contexte marchand où des biens s’échangent entre des acheteurs et des vendeurs, les agents accorderaient moins d’importance à la vie des souris, laquelle est supposée refléter le poids des valeurs morales. Les détails manquent pour ce faire une idée précise des différences entre les contextes marchand et non-marchand de la prise de décision, mais à brûle-pourpoint, je dirais que ce résultat n’a rien de surprenant. Si l’on considère que dans le contexte marchand l’espace de choix est plus grand et/ou les prix sont plus faibles, on peut prévoir que les agents vont accorder moins d’importance aux valeurs morales. La relation entre la satisfaction des désirs individuels et la prise en compte des valeurs morales relève d’un arbitrage tout ce qu’il y a de plus classique. Si le prix de la satisfaction des désirs individuels décroît relativement à celui de la prise en compte des valeurs morales, alors il n’y a rien de surprenant à ce que ces dernières soient moins suivies.
Ce que cette étude semble montrer (encore une fois, je ne l’ai pas lu), c’est uniquement la présence d’un tel mécanisme d’arbitrage, pour des préférences qui restent inchangées. Mais elle ne montre pas en revanche que les institutions marchandes modifient les préférences des agents dans le sens d’un affaiblissement des préférences morales ou sociales. Sur ce point, j’avais discuté ici un papier de Samuel Bowles qui semblait suggérer précisément l’inverse.
Rationalité Limitée 