TY - JOUR A1 - Max, Raphael A1 - Uhl, Matthias T1 - The downside of moralizing financial markets BT - anti-semitic stereotypes in German MTurkers JF - Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2021.100512 KW - ethical investment KW - bounded morality KW - out-group bias KW - stereotyping KW - vignette experiment Y1 - 2021 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2021.100512 SN - 2214-6350 VL - 2021 IS - 31 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Max, Raphael A1 - Uhl, Matthias T1 - Moral luck in investment contexts: We consciously find unprofitable investments less moral JF - PLOS ONE N2 - Moral luck refers to whether an actor is morally praised or blamed for an action whose outcome they could not influence. In two studies, we investigated the behavioral importance of this phenomenon in the realm of investments, which has become increasingly subject to ethical evaluations. In our first online experiment, we examined whether people’s moral evaluation of an investment decision depended on its arbitrary outcome and whether their interpretation of the nature of the decision was driven by this outcome. Our results showed that profitable investments were considered more moral than unprofitable investments. Moreover, profitable investments were labeled “investments” instead of “speculation” or “gambling” more often than unprofitable ones. In our second study, we asked the subjects to assess investments independent of the outcome. After the outcome was announced, the subjects were given the opportunity to reflect and change their initial decision. The results show that people change the moral evaluation and label of investments when told that it had a bad outcome. This observation was stable across different investment contexts. These findings suggest that we must be careful with the increasing moralization of investment decisions and be sensitive to our cognitive biases. UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278677 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278677 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-32059 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 18 IS - 1 PB - PLOS CY - San Francisco ER -