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to norms of fairness in both experimental and real world situations that are non-repeated
or infrequently repeated [2]. People do repay gifts and take revenge in interactions with
complete strangers, even in those cases where it is costly for them and yields to neither
present nor future material rewards
1
.
Moreover, human beings act cooperatively, obey and enforce norms of fairness, even
against their self-interest, and the volume of experimental evidence supporting these
and other facts that separate us from the selfishness assumption continues to grow (see,
for example [12]). The assumption that individuals are self-regarding is in strong con-
flict with daily observed preferences.
First,
because agents not only care about the out-
comes of their economic interactions, but also about the process through which the
results are attained.
Second,
because in their decisions agents do not solely consider
what they
personally
gain and lose through an interaction. Violating a fairness norm
has emotional consequences that enter negatively in the agent's utility function [7]. In
addition,we can say that adherence to norms of fairness is underwritten by emotions,
and not merely by the expected gain from the repeated interaction [7] (the so-called
'prosocial emotions', such as shame, guilt, empathy or remorse, all of which involve
feelings of discomfort at doing something that appears wrong according to one's own
values and/or those of other agents whose opinions one values). Furthermore, social
scientists (
e.g
., [6]) have defended the idea that there exist innate moral principles in
humans such as fairness which are the product of biological evolution.
In this article, we test the hypothesis that agents have fairness as a moral value, and
that the transgression of this moral value of fairness triggers guilt feelings in them. In
order to measure the influence of
moral guilt
on the agents' decision-making process,
we present an agent-based model of the Prisoner's Dilemma, where the intensity of
an agent's guilt feeling plays a determinant role in her course of action. The paper is
organized as follows. In Section 2.1 we present an overview of the concept of guilt and
the analysis of our game-theoretic model of moral guilt (based on two proposed notions
of moral values: Harsanyi's and Rawls') and its influence on strategic decision making.
In Section 3 we describe the agent-based model and its implementation. Finally, in
Section 3.2 we present some preliminary results and, in Section 4, our ideas for future
work.
2
Moral Guilt
While there exist many contrasting theories explain the discrepancy between pure inten-
tional decision and moral behavior, most of them highlight the variability of individual
behavior depending on the situational context and group belonging
2
.
Furthermore, adherence to moral standards and social norms is underwritten by emo-
tions, the so-called,
prosocial emotions
, such as empathy, shame, guilt, pride or regret.
1
Cf. J. Mansbridge's monograph [20], where several social scientists from different disciplines
argue that individuals have motives for action that go well beyond their egoistic desires and
pure rational calculations. People, they suggest, are influenced by feelings of solidarity, altru-
ism and concern for others and their well-being.
2
A well-integrated model of the ways in which attitudes, norms, and perceived control feed
into behavioral intentions and subsequent behavior is proposed by Ajzen's theory of planned
behavior [1].
