ICES Seminar in Experimental Economics and Game Theory
When Do More Lives Matter More? Consequentialist Intuitions Across Contexts, Individuals, and Cultures in a Global Moral Game
Friday, September 25, 2026 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Vernon Smith Hall (formerly Metropolitan Building), 5075 (ICES Classroom)
The ICES Seminar in Experimental Economics and Game Theory of the Fall 2026 semester will feature:
MIT Sloan School of Management
When Do More Lives Matter More? Consequentialist Intuitions Across Contexts, Individuals, and Cultures in a Global Moral Game
Abstract
MyGoodness is a ‘serious’ game in which participants make a series of forced choices between two charitable donations. The game uses a conjoint design that varies features of each charity, including the number of people helped, recipients’ gender, age, location, relationship to the donor (stranger, relative, self), aid domain (e.g., water, nutrition, assault), charity identity, and whether information must be actively uncovered. The game was played by over 250,000 individuals in more than 200 countries, yielding nearly 3 million donation decisions.
Using these data, we construct a novel measure of consequentialism—how much weight individuals place on the number of lives saved—and show how it varies across decisions, individuals, and cultures.
At the decision level, we find that consequentialism is ‘comparative’. In direct comparisons, participants are relatively (in comparison to other charitable features) sensitive to the number of lives saved, but less so when lives saved are varied across decisions instead of within decisions. And, participants are almost completely insensitive to the financial cost of saving lives. Moreover, although participants express a willingness to trade off lives saved to help recipients with particular attributes, such as location, gender, or age, they are no more consequentialist for recipients with these attributes.
When information about lives saved is hidden, participants display similarly inconsistent behavioral patterns. They uncover information about lives saved at relatively high rates in comparison to other charitable features, but at essentially constant rates – with little regard to how useful they would find this information were it not covered.
At the individual level, we find meaningful variation in consequentialism, with those who put more weight on consequences also uncovering information about lives saved more often. We also find evidence consistent with ‘strategic ignorance’: participants who prefer local charities are less likely to uncover information about lives saved, particularly when this information might compel them to choose a local charity. However, the effects are slight.
At the cultural level, we document meaningful variation in consequentialism, independent of national indicators of charitability, collectivism, tightness, and WEIRDness. We likewise find meaningful variation in comparative consequentialism, independent of how consequentialist – overall – a culture is.
We interpret these findings in light of existing research on moral judgment and effective giving, arguing that – by and large – the results concord with existing findings, while pointing to some additional quirks of consequentialist intuitions.
For more information about the Seminar Series, please visit the Seminar Schedule homepage.
