It's Only Wrong If It's Transactional

Moral Perceptions of Obfuscated Exchange

Bibliographic Data

ID4522334
AuthorsOliver Schilke (0000-0001-6832-1677, University of Arizona), Gabriel Rossman (0000-0002-3556-0601, University of California, Los Angeles, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume83
Issue6
Pages1079-1107
Publication date2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0003122418806284
OpenAlexW2899215715
LanguageEN
Citations received44
References cited86

A wide class of economic exchanges, such as bribery and compensated adoption, are considered morally disreputable precisely because they are seen as economic exchanges. However, parties to these exchanges can structurally obfuscate them by arranging the transfers so as to obscure that a disreputable exchange is occurring at all. In this article, we propose that four obfuscation structures-bundling, brokerage, gift exchange, and pawning-will decrease the moral opprobrium of external audiences by (1) masking intentionality, (2) reducing the explicitness of the reciprocity, and (3) making the exchange appear to be a type of common practice. We report the results from four experiments assessing participants' moral reactions to scenarios that describe either an appropriate exchange, a quid pro quo disreputable exchange, or various forms of obfuscated exchange. In support of our hypotheses, results show that structural obfuscation effectively mitigates audiences' moral offense at disreputable exchanges and that the effects are substantially mediated by perceived attributional opacity, transactionalism, and collective validity

Computer security · Economics · Law and economics · Obfuscation · Perception · Positive economics · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Sociology · Computer Science · Ethics in Business and Education · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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