Love thy Neighbor: Moral Suasion and the Formation of Policy Preferences

• In Event: Using Experiments to Study Public Policy

Abstract

Recent experimental work on moral suasion has administered moral messages abstractly, that is, without any sense of who the message is given by or in what context. This abstractness limits the external validity of the studies. In addition, recent studies have focused on the effect of suasion on behavior, overlooking its effect on the formation of policy preferences. We address these two gaps by designing a survey experiment that administers moral suasion—the Golden Rule— as delivered by particular sources such as a family member, a religious or a political affiliation. We then examine the effect of this concrete moral suasion on cooperative behavior, and on the formation of policy preferences on taxation, welfare, and immigration. We find that the impact of a moral message on individual behavior and policy preferences in mediated by the source of the message.

Authors

• Leonardo Antenangeli, The University of Houston

• Pablo Martin Pinto, University Houston