Moral guilt: An agent-based model analysis

Abstract

In this article we analyze the influence of a concrete moral emotion (i.e. moral guilt) on strategic decision making. We present a normal form Prisoner's Dilemma with a moral component. We assume that agents evaluate the game's outcomes with respect to their ideality degree (i.e. how much a given outcome conforms to the player's moral values), based on two proposed notions on ethical preferences: Harsanyi's and Rawls'. Based on such game, we construct and agent-based model of moral guilt, where the intensity of an agent's guilt feeling plays a determinant role in her course of action. Results for both constructions of ideality are analyzed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.