The Illusion of Morality as Self-Interest: A Reason to Cooperate in Social Dilemmas

The Illusion of Morality as Self-Interest: A Reason to Cooperate in Social DilemmasAuthor(s): Jonathan BaronSource: Psychological Science, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Jul., 1997), pp. 330-335Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Association for Psychological ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063203 .

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THE ILLUSION OF MORALITY AS SELF-INTEREST: A Reason to Cooperate in Social Dilemmas

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Research Report

Jonathan Baron University of Pennsylvania

Abstract - One reason for people's voluntary cooperation in social dilemmas, or altruistic behavior in general may be their belief that altruism pays off in terms of long-run self-interest. Although this is often true, it is typically false in large-scale social dilemmas among strangers. In three questionnaire studies, subjects endorsed this self- interest illusion frequently for large-scale dilemmas, such as overfishing and pollution, in which the benefits of cooperation are delayed.

Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. - Ecclesiastes 11:1

If people know that maintaining current family size will reduce cropland area

per person by a third or half during the next generation, they can see what this will mean for their children. If they know that large families almost certainly will bring more hunger and even mass starvation, they may well decide to shift to smaller families.

-Brown (1994, p. 194)

One type of conflict between morality and self-interest is a social

dilemma, in which each of several people faces two options. One

option, defection, is better for the actor's self-interest, and the other,

cooperation, is better for everyone together (Baron, 1994; Dawes, 1980; Dawes & Thaler, 1988). People often cooperate even when they lose money from doing so and even when the benefits of cooperation are delayed (Dawes & Thaler, 1988).

The simplest explanation for such cooperation is that people care about others (Margolis, 1982). Whether we count people's altruistic

goals as part of their own selfish goals is moot: The important fact is that altruism is contingent on the goals of others (Baron, 1993).

People may also cooperate because they misunderstand. For ex-

ample, people may confuse correlation and causality, thinking that because their cooperation is correlated (across situations) with the behavior of others, their choice can influence others. Often this is true, but people may overgeneralize to cases in which it is false. Quattrone and Tversky (1984) found that subjects were more willing to vote for their favored political party when they were part of a group considered crucial than when they were not, even though they had one vote in each case. Shafir and Tversky (1992) found that subjects were likely to defect in a two-person social dilemma when they knew that their

partner had defected or when they knew that their partner had cooperated. But when they did not know their partner's choice, more

subjects cooperated, as if they could influence their partner. The experiments reported here examined another illusion that

could help people justify altruistic behavior, including cooperation when benefits are delayed, to themselves. People may think that al-

truistic behavior is in their long-run self-interest, even though they understand that it is not in their short-run interest. People may believe that altruism will pay off in the long run because they will reap the benefits of their own altruistic behavior.

In small groups, this may be true for many reasons (Frank, 1988): Altruists gain a reputation for cooperating; they also really do influence others, who then reciprocate. Evolution may have made us spe- cially attuned to this kind of reciprocity. But in large-scale social dilemmas involving thousands or billions of strangers, the effects of each person's action on each single person, including the actor, are too small to matter. Cooperation is beneficial on the whole only because so many people are affected. In the self-interest illusion, people do not consider this quantitative argument. They may confuse the benefit of a single cooperative act with the benefit of everyone cooperating, or

they may simply attempt no quantitative comparison. Such confusions or omissions allow them to maintain the happy belief that morality and self-interest do not really conflict.

A cross-cultural study provided some evidence for this illusion

(Chaitas, Solodkin, & Baron, 1994). Students in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States were asked about dilemmas such as whether to bribe a mechanic to certify a pollution inspection or pay more to fix the car. When asked, "What would be the best decision for you in the

long run?" most subjects in all three countries (but fewer in the United States) answered that it would be better to behave morally (e.g., to fix the car) even though they understood that this action had an immediate cost.

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 presented two situations designed to elicit the self- interest illusion.

Method

Twenty-five subjects (16 female, 9 male), mostly students at the

University of Pennsylvania and at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, were paid $6 per hour for completing several questionnaires. One of these questionnaires tested the self-interest illusion. The first item read:

Suppose you live in a rural area, with houses separated. There is a water

shortage, and the state government asks you and 1000 others in your area not to use excess water, e.g., for watering flower gardens. You and many others would prefer to continue to water your gardens. Because the area is rural, you and others can easily do this without anyone seeing you do it, the people in this area do not talk about whether they watered their gardens or not, and most

gardens, including yours, are behind houses so that nobody else sees whether

they have been watered or not. Thus, nobody will ever know what you have done.

Do you agree with the following statement? Please explain why or why not.

Address correspondence to Jonathan Baron, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6196; e-mail: [email protected].

330 Copyright © 1997 American Psychological Society VOL. 8, NO. 4, JULY 1997




Jonathan Baron

If you did not care about others, then it would be in your self-interest to water your garden rather than let it wilt in order to save water.

The second item (followed by an analogous question), read:

Suppose you are an ocean fisherman. The kind of fish you catch is declining from over-fishing. If you and the 1000 other fishermen who catch this fish cut back on what you catch, the fish population will stop declining. But, of course, you will lose money if you cut back. Nobody knows how much fish you catch. If you catch a lot, you can easily bring them to different markets. You and the other fishermen also do not talk to each other about how much you catch. It is entirely a private matter.

Results

Forty percent of the responses (32% for water, 48% for fish) exhibited the self-interest illusion as indicated by both a negative answer to the question and a clear justification. The primary data are the justifications, which indicate that many subjects answered the question as asked and exhibited the self-interest illusion. Here are examples:

Even though I may not care about others, it is still in my best interest to conserve water. I would not want to increase my chances of running out of water.

By not cutting back on my current level of fishing I would more than likely be hurting myself in the future, for sooner or later the fish population would dwindle down to zero, leaving me with absolutely no income. I am willing to give up short-term financial growth for long-term financial stability.

It would be in my self interest to cut back anyway because if the fish population decreases too much, no one will be able to fish.

The water shortage affects me, too. If I water my garden, I'm harming myself because I am using water that could be better used for bathing or drinking

In the short term, I would agree, but in the long term I'd disagree. For the short term I'd bring in more money, and be better off. But the more and more of this particular fish I caught, the less there would be breeding in the ocean. Even- tually, they will die out and I will be left with none

Even if I would lose money not catching as many fish, if I continue to catch a lot I will eventually hurt myself because there will not be any more fish. Even though I am selfish I still must realize that I will only hurt myself in the long run if I catch all of the fish.

It would not be in my self-interest to not conserve water because eventually my water bill will increase and I would be contributing to the drought which would eventually affect me.

The water shortage would undoubtedly affect your own water supply as long as you are residing in the same community as the others. You can not really separate yourself from this reality.

The shortage of fish would undoubtedly affect your own supply of fish as long as you are fishing in the same ocean as the other fishermen and fisherwomen.

Notice in these examples the failure to balance the costs and benefits of cooperation quantitatively.

Another 8% of responses answered the question as if it concerned the group rather than the individual. For example: In the long run, the water shortage would eventually affect me too. If everyone thinks the same way, . . . everyone will water their garden and the water shortage will continue and worsen, which will highly affect me.

If everyone secretly used excess water, then the water would get even more [short].

If all your neighbors felt the same way, and did not conserve the water, then everyone in this situation would be hurt.

One response echoed the causal illusion of Quattrone and Tversky (1984):

If you don't cut back who's to say the other fishermen will cut back?

Thirty percent of the answers showed no illusion. Many of these mentioned the morality of the situation. For example:

I agree with the above statement. The basis for a person to follow this . . . restriction would be concern for the well being of the community as a whole. . . . Whether I water the garden or not, this would not use up enough water to really make a difference.

Twenty-two percent of the responses did not answer the question, in most cases because they discussed only the morality of the act.

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 2 examined the correlates of the self-interest illusion in several situations. It included three questions designed to test whether subjects understood each item as a self-other conflict.

Method

Subjects were 55 students (31 males, 24 females) solicited as in Experiment 1. The actions concerned 10 issues, described as follows:

1. LETTING THE SOIL ERODE. In certain areas, the productivity of agri- cultural or grazing land is declining because of nutrient depletion and soil erosion. Farmers continue to use methods that do this, instead of alternative methods that conserve the soil better but are more costly in time and effort.

2. POLLUTING. Pollutants from industrial processes are contaminating the environment's air, water, and soil, putting people at risk of disease throughout much of the world. Companies release pollutants instead of treating them or avoiding their production.

3. BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. Industries burn coal, oil, and natural gas, which produce carbon dioxide, which can lead to global warming and disruption of human activities. Companies continue to use these fossil fuels instead of alternative fuels or conservation.

4. LOGGING WITHOUT REPLANTING. Loggers and logging companies in many parts of the world are cutting down forests without replacing them, to make room for industries or farming. This releases carbon dioxide, which can lead to global warming and disruption of human activities, and it disrupts the habitat of wildlife and salmon. Logging companies cut down forests without replacing them, instead of planting new trees.

5. EXCESSIVE CHILDBEARING. In many countries of the world, families have too many children, more than two children per couple (instead of limiting themselves to two), so that the growth of population is faster than the growth in goods and services, including food and water, and people are becoming poorer as a result.

6. USING WATER INEFFICIENTLY. In many regions of the world, water is scarce. Farmers still use it to irrigate crops that require large amounts of water, such as cotton. Often they take the water out of the ground (with wells) or out of rivers, thus preventing others from using the water for basic food crops that require less water. The farmers could instead grow crops that need less water.

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Illusion of Morality as Self-interest

7. OVERFISHING. In some areas of the world's oceans, stocks of commercial fish species are declining because the annual fish catch exceeds the capacity of the fish to reproduce. Fishermen take out more fish than the amount that would allow the fish population to be sustained, instead of limiting their catch.

8. DENYING PERMISSION FOR TRANSPLANTS. Too few organs are do- nated for transplants when people die. Other people die who could be saved by transplanted organs. Families of patients who die often refuse to give permission for transplants.

9. TEENAGE CHILDBEARING. Many unmarried teenagers have babies that

they are poorly equipped to care for. These babies tend to grow up disadvan-

taged intellectually and emotionally, and many of them are a burden on others.

10. REFUSING TO TEST FOR BIRTH DEFECTS. Many children are born with serious birth defects such as spina bifida. Most of these children must live in institutions their whole lives, and they are seriously impaired both mentally and physically. Most of these children would not be born if their mothers had fetal tests and abortions. But many mothers refuse to get tested.

Subjects evaluated each of the following statements for each of the 10 actions listed, indicating whether they agreed with the whole statement, disagreed with at least part of the statement, neither agreed nor disagreed, or did not understand the statement. Agreement was coded as 2, disagreement as 0, neither as 1, and not understanding as missing data.

A. Those who choose this option find it more desirable than the alternative at the time they make the choice.

B. The harm done to people from this option exceeds the benefits.

C. It would be better on the whole if this option were chosen less often.

D. The difference between this option and the alternative is noticeable to the

person who makes the choice.

E. The difference between this option and the alternative is not noticeable to

any other people.

F. Those who choose this option find it less desirable than the alternative over their whole lives.

G. Those who choose the alternative to this option find it more desirable than

this option at the time they make the choice, because they know that they did not harm others.

H. Those who choose the alternative to this option find it more desirable than this option at the time they make the choice, because they themselves would suffer the harm that results from this option.

I. Those who choose the alternative to this option find it more desirable than this option over their whole lives, because they know that they did not harm others.

J. Those who choose the alternative to this option find it more desirable than this option over their whole lives, because the harm they would experience themselves from choosing the option would exceed any benefits to them that would come from choosing it.

K. Those who choose this option find it less desirable over their whole lives, because choosing it sets an example for others to choose it, and the harm they experience from this effect on others exceeds any benefits to them that come from choosing it themselves.

L. Governments or world bodies should regulate this more than they do.

M. Any regulation of this would be an intrusion on individual rights.

N. Regulation is not needed, because once people understand the effect of their choices on others they will not choose this option so often.

Results

Agreement with Statements A, B, or C, which implies that the act was understood as defection, occurred in 47% of the cases. Items 5, 9, and 10 showed such agreement in fewer than 30% of the cases.

Statements J and K assess the self-interest illusion. As shown in Table 1, mean scores on these questions were greater than 1 for most issues: Subjects endorsed these items in more cases than not. (The hypothesis requires only that endorsement will be frequent enough to matter in practical terms, and this seems to be true.)

The average score for Statements J and K correlated positively with the average score for Statement L, across items, in 22 subjects and negatively in 10. (The rest had too few items or no variance.) The

positive correlations may result from a belief that pursuit of long-term

Table 1. Mean answers in Experiment 2

Statement

Issue DEFGHI JKLMN

Soil erosion 1.03 0.34 0.91 1.06 1.37 1.24 1.26 0.91 1.77 0.20 0.29 Pollution 1.50 0.11 0.81 1.45 1.47 1.57 1.11 1.25 1.92 0.08 0.08 Fossil fuels 1.00 0.43 0.77 1.43 1.32 1.59 1.29 1.15 1.96 0.07 0.14

Logging 1.44 0.06 0.79 1.44 1.32 1.64 1.06 1.19 2.00 0.03 0.18 Childbearing 0.81 0.19 0.69 1.44 1.50 1.38 1.13 1.07 1.63 0.94 0.38 Water use 0.75 0.33 0.83 1.38 1.50 1.48 1.13 1.17 1.79 0.21 0.25

Overfishing 0.94 0.41 0.94 1.32 1.44 1.39 1.18 1.39 1.91 0.06 0.03

Organ transplants 1.00 0.00 0.48 1.48 0.52 1.68 0.56 0.78 0.40 1.72 1.12

Teenage childbearing 1.54 0.15 1.08 0.85 1.62 0.92 1.31 0.92 0.92 1.08 0.43 Birth defects 1.43 0.07 1.14 1.43 1.79 1.21 1.36 1.15 1.00 1.14 0.57

Mean 1.14 0.23 0.86 1.29 1.34 1.35 1.16 1.13 1.60 0.42 0.31

Note. Only items understood as defection (according to responses to Statements A, B, and C) were included in this analysis. See the text for an

explanation of the statements and response coding.

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Jonathan Baron

self-interest cannot be depended on. The negative correlations may result from a belief that regulation is not needed, because people can be depended on to pursue their long-term self-interest.

EXPERIMENT 3

Experiment 3 concerned two hypothetical games and a fishery scenario. To increase clarity, the questionnaire asked subjects whether cooperation would cause them to make more money, rather than whether it was in their self-interest. It also asked for justifications. The two games differed in whether cooperators could easily see themselves as benefiting from their own cooperation: In one condition, cooperators sacrificed $1 and got no benefit; in the other condition, they sacrificed $2 and got $1 back. The idea of "getting back what you put in'* is related to the self-interest illusion.

Method

Subjects were 64 students (22 male, 42 female) solicited as in the previous experiments.

The questionnaire described three scenarios. The first read,

Suppose that you and nine other people who do this study each have a token worth $2. Each of the ten people have two choices. Each of you can turn in your token or keep it. For every token turned in, each person in the group will get $1. Those who keep their tokens can cash them in for $2 each, and they still get the money from what the others turn in. What would you do? (Circle one.) keep give What would give you more money? keep give Explain.

The second scenario was identical except that the token was worth $1 instead of $2 and the last two sentences read,

For every token turned in, each person in the group will get $1, except the person who turns it in. Those who keep their tokens can cash them in for $1 each, and they still get the money from what the others turn in.

(The order of the two scenarios was switched for half the subjects. Order did not affect any results.)

After answering the questions about the two scenarios separately, subjects were asked, "In which situation do you help yourself more, financially, by turning in your token?" They could choose either one of the two situations or indicate that the two were "the same."

The third scenario read,

Suppose you are an ocean fisherman. The kind of fish you catch is declining from over-fishing. There are 1000 fishermen like you who catch it. The decline will slow down if the fishermen fish less. But, of course, you will lose money if you cut back. Nobody knows how much fish you catch. If you catch a lot, you can easily bring them to different markets. You and the other fishermen also do not talk to each other about how much you catch. So whether you cut back or not is entirely a private matter.

If nobody cuts back, then everyone can keep fishing at roughly their current rate for 2 years and then they will have to stop. Every 100 people who cut back to 50% of their current catch will extend this time for about a year. Thus, if 100 people (out of 1000) cut back this much, fishing can continue for 3 years, and if 200 people cut back, it can continue for 4 years. (It is not expected that many more than this will cut back voluntarily.)

Subjects were asked, "Would you cut back? . . . Why or why not?" and "Would cutting back increase your income from fishing

over the next few years? . . . Why or why not?" A final question concerned a law to prevent overfishing.

Results

Forty-two percent of subjects in the games (averaging over the two) saw cooperation as helping them, and 29% in the fishery scenario saw cooperation as helping them in the long run, despite the fact that the questions in this experiment referred to money.

Most justifications for yes answers to the question about whether income would increase in the fishery example referred to the distinc- tion between the long term versus short term. For example:

At first no, but eventually yes because there would be an abundance and they would be in demand.

If I cut back now, I would not have to face the fear of running out of fish to sell and I could keep staying in business for a longer time and everyone else would also benefit.

I would have to [cut back] because if I wouldn't cut back it would come back and hurt me eventually.

Because if we cut back, there will be more fish for 4 years or 3 years so it would be a greater profit.

Yes because it can continue for a longer period, and the fish will have more time to reproduce, thus increasing the fish population.

[Income] would not increase directly, but in the long run you will end up with more money over the years.

We shouldn't be selfish. We should look to the long term instead of the short term In the long run, it may [increase my income] because the fish would be less frenzied, and there would be more of them, and they would have time to reproduce more so there may be more fish to catch in the future.

Eventually yes, because it would allow me to continue fishing for more years, even if I had to cut back initially.

In the games, all justifications for yes answers (to the question of whether cooperation would lead to more money) assumed explicitly that the effect of cooperation would depend on what others did. Fol- lowing are examples:

If everyone realizes that they can make more as a group than as individuals, everyone will give up their token. If I held onto the token, I would make the most (could be equal to other people) but that does not necessarily guarantee me the greatest profit.

If everyone turns in their tokens all will make more money.

Because if everyone turned in the tokens you can make money.

If each person handed in their tokens, then each person would end up with $10, so everyone makes out.

Assuming the others would turn in their tokens, all of us would get the maxi- mum amount of money.

A few subjects made justifications like these in the fishery case as well:

Only if the other 99 or 199 did. If not, then I would have lost that 50%.

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Illusion of Morality as Self-Interest

Yes, if everyone cuts back. No, if you're the only one who cuts back.

Yes, in that if everyone cut back, I could fish for 12 years at a 50% rate, equaling 6 years of full fishing.

One subject quite explicitly displayed the illusion of causality:

Chances are if you're greedy others will be as well so you should just give.

Willingness to cooperate was correlated with perceived long-run gain. In the games, 75% of subjects who perceived long-term gain were willing to cooperate, and 11% of those who did not perceive it were willing to cooperate (averaged across both games, p < .0005 for each). In the fishery scenario, 42% of those who perceived long-run gain were willing to cut back, and 16% of those who did not perceive it were willing to cut back (p = .024, one-tailed Fisher exact test).

Responses to the game and fishery scenarios were not correlated, for either the decision or the judgment about money. The justifications suggest that different issues were involved. The game scenario evoked the illusion of causality (Quattrone & Tversky, 1984), as expressed in the tendency to interpret questions about individual behavior as asking about group behavior. The fishery scenario evoked a confusion between morality and self-interest.

Although the two games did not differ in reported tendency to cooperate or perceived long-run gain, the direct question comparing the games revealed that subjects found the game in which they received $1 back more helpful to them financially (44% vs. 16% giving the opposite answer, p = .006, sign test). This effect was uncorrelated with the self-interest illusion. Although the two effects are theoreti- cally similar, it seems that they are not causally related.

Most subjects supported the law to prevent overfishing (71%), and the reasons for failing to support it were idiosyncratic. ("Because I would want to break that law." "It's not a good law " "We shouldn't have to pay for fishers' income as the taxpayers. The fishers should slow down " "It is their livelihood and if they want to do more to preserve it then it is up to them.") Support for the law did not correlate with other responses.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Many people think that cooperation pays off in the long run. This is a natural idea for many reasons. First, as noted, it is often true because of effects on reputation and influence. People may believe it as a general principle, and they may overgeneralize to situations in which it is unlikely to be true. Second, it is a convenient myth even if it is false. When parents try to explain to their children why they should consider interests of others, a natural answer is that it pays off in the long run, as indeed it often does. But the story extends to the

supernatural. Traditional Christianity, for example, holds that morality and long-run self-interest do not conflict because moral behavior finds its reward in the afterlife, at least. This view has affected Western moral philosophy (Parfit, 1984).

The illusion may stem from four sources: First, as in the justifications for the game scenario in Experiment 3 (and less so elsewhere), it may result from a confusion of "what I would do" with "what we would do." This is similar to the confusion of cause and correlation postulated by Shafir and Tversky (1992).

Second, the illusion may result from the confusion of long-run group interest with long-run self-interest. This confusion is more

likely to occur in social dilemmas in which the benefits of cooperation are delayed and the costs are immediate, as opposed to those in which both costs and benefits are immediate. This confusion is apparent in the justifications in Experiment 3; references to the longrun were found in the fishing scenario (a social trap) but not in the game scenario. (Social dilemmas with delayed benefits are called social traps; Messick & McClelland, 1983.) All items in Experiments 1 and 2 were social traps, with the single exception of the transplant item in

Experiment 2, which showed the smallest self-interest illusion (State- ments J and K, Table 1).

Third, the illusion may stem from the desire to avoid trade-offs, in

particular, the trade-off between morality and self-interest. People generally tend to deny the existence of trade-offs by convincing themselves that no sacrifice of one goal is required in order to achieve another (Jervis, 1976, pp. 128-142; Montgomery, 1984).

Fourth, the illusion may also be related to failure of integration (Thaler, 1985). People may fail to attempt a quantitative comparison between the costs of cooperation and the benefits to the self that result from the effect of cooperation on the provision of the good (e.g., more fish left in the ocean). The latter benefits exist, but they are typically (and, in Experiment 3, explicitly) small compared with the costs. When people do not attempt a quantitative comparison, they may attend too much to the benefits.

We might think that the self-interest illusion is harmless or even beneficial, because it does bring about cooperation. (Evolution might have even favored it for this reason because it would have been an illusion less often in the small groups of early hominids.) The illusion, however, may have negative effects as well. It may encourage people to think of political action as a way of pursuing their self-interest, and it may thus encourage people to act on behalf of their narrow group at the expense of members of more inclusive groups, such as all people. In fact, the self-interest justification for political action is usually insufficient to motivate it, but political action is easier to justify when the interests of larger groups are considered (Baron, in press; Yam-

agishi, 1986).

Acknowledgments - This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR92-23015. 1 thank David Bersoff, William C. Hale, John Monterosso, Michele Nathan, and the reviewers for comments.

REFERENCES

Baron, J. (1993). Morality and rational choice. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer.

Baron, J. (1994). Thinking and deciding (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Baron, J. (in press). Political action vs. voluntarism in social dilemmas and aid for the needy. Rationality and Society.

Brown, L.R. (1994). Facing food insecurity. In L.R. Brown, C. Flavin, S. Pastel, & L. Starke (Eds.), State of the world 1994 (pp. 177-197). New York: Norton.

Chaitas, S., Solodkin, A., & Baron, J. (1994). Students' attitudes toward social dilemmas in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Dawes, R.M. (1980). Social dilemmas. Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 169-193.

Dawes, R.M., & Thaler, R.H. (1988). Cooperation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2, 187-197.

Frank, R.H. (1988). Passions within reason: The strategic role of the emotions. New York: Norton.

Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and misperception in international politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Margolis, H. (1982). Selfishness, altruism, and rationality: A theory of social choice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Messick, D.M., & McClelland, C.L. (1983). Social traps and temporal traps. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 9. 105-110.

Montgomery, H. (1984). Decision rules and the search for dominance structure: Towards a process model of decision making. In P.C. Humphreys, O. Svenson, & A. Van (Eds.), Analysing and aiding decision processes (pp. 343-369). Amsterdam: North Urtiian/1

Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and persons. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Quattrone, G.A., & Tversky, A. (1984). Causal versus diagnostic contingencies: On

self-deception and the voter's illusion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol- ogy, 46, 237-248.

Shafir, E, & Tversky, A. (1992). Thinking through uncertainty: Nonconsequential rea- soning and choice. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 449-474.

Thaler, R. (1985). Mental accounting and consumer choice. Marketing Science, 4, 199- 214.

Yamagishi, T. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1 10-1 16.

(Received 3/18/96; Accepted 7/31/96)

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The Illusion of Morality as Self-Interest: A Reason to Cooperate in Social Dilemmas