Experimental Aversion

In this research, we aim to further explore the concept of `experiment aversion`: Individuals appear more likely to object on moral grounds to a randomisation between two policies affecting others than to each policy alone. Our further exploration is motivated by contrasting findings. Previous work using a vignette design (Meyer et al, 2019) found evidence in favour of experiment aversion. Our own subsequent work, a pre-registered non-hypothetical experiment found no supporting evidence. We hypothesize that the diverging findings are driven by the fact that in the non-hypothetical experiment, individuals’ experimental payoffs are linked to learning from policy evidence. To test this hypothesis, we propose a follow-up study that employs a vignette design similar to Meyer et al. (2019). Each vignette describes a situation in which a decision maker has to decide between implementing a policy A, a policy B or to conduct a randomized experiment between both policies (A/B) before making a final choice between A and B. In a departure from previous designs, participating individuals are allocated, between subjects, to three different conditions. The baseline condition conceptually replicates Meyer et al. (2019) by asking participants to rate the moral appropriateness of implementing policies A, B, or a randomization of A/B. In the two treatment conditions we ask participants to indicate instead how the decision maker should act (Treatment 1) or to chose how they would act themselves in lieu of the decision maker (Treatment 2). Examining variations in experimental aversion across these three conditions will help determine whether individuals rate the instrumental value of learning from randomization higher than their possible moral objection.