Experimental Design
*Overview*
This is a vignette experiment in which participants – in this case, professional philosophers and Prolific participants – see a subset of three scenarios, with philosopher participants able to choose three additional scenarios, drawn from a pool of 12 scenarios in the way described in the Randomization Unit section below.
All the scenarios concern the hypothetical purchase, sale and production of mugs. They differ along various dimensions: the explicit exercise of power, the existence of inequality, background luck, the satisfaction of basic needs, an unjust source of power and disrespect. We introduced these scenarios in Ferguson et al. (2026), where participants reported how much exploitation they saw in them on a 0-100 scale. Based on the data in that study, we selected 12 vignettes for the current study to form three categories in terms of the level of exploitation participants saw in them: four low-exploitation, four medium-exploitation, and four high-exploitation scenarios. Using the coding in the Supplementary Materials of that paper (Section B available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2Fajps.70058&file=ajps70058-supp-0001-Appendices.pdf), those are:
Low = {R3B, R3L, R1D, R3D}
Medium = {R3N, R2L, R4B, R3U}
High = {R2N, R4D, R4N, R4U}
We will provide summary statistics on the response data from the earlier study for these scenarios in the paper or its appendix.
For each scenario:
(i) Participants assess how the well-being of the two people changes as a result of the scenario for each of three categories of subjective well-being (Satisfaction, Happiness, Flourishing, which appear in a random order) on a five-point Likert scale (falls significantly, falls somewhat, no impact, rises somewhat, rises significantly).
(ii) They next assess how morally wrong they find A's behavior on a five-point Likert scale (not at all, a little, moderately, significantly, extremely).
(iii) They next report what they think the most frequent response to the wrongfulness question (of point ii) is.
The full transcripts (of the initial email confirmation page for the professional philosopher sample and the main survey for each sample) are attached to this registry entry.
An outline of our analysis plan is attached to this registry entry.
*Payments to participants*
Individual choices on subjective well-being and wrongfulness judgments are not incentivized. The norm-elicitation question is incentivized for both samples. The philosopher draw awards ten Amazon vouchers worth USD 100 (or the local-currency equivalent) each to eligible participants so long as they have not opted out; the Prolific draw awards ten bonuses worth USD 100 each. These are two independent draws.
Participation is compensated by a fixed payment of 4 GBP for the Prolific sample via the platform. For the professional philosopher sample, participation is compensated via a prize draw for Amazon vouchers worth 100 USD which will be sent to ten randomly selected participants from the set of respondents who complete the survey (so long as they have not opted out of the prize draw). This third draw is also independent from the others.
*Participants: philosophers*
We will recruit philosophers (academic philosophers and philosophy graduate students) online, through two well-known philosophy blogs (detailed just below); the Philos-L listserv (hosted by the University of Liverpool); and a direct email campaign. Participants responding via the blogs and the Philos-L listserv are required first to enter their institutional email address in an initial one-page form, which then emails them a personalized link to the main survey. This helps us verify their association with a recognized academic institution.
The blogs are Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog (https://leiterreports.com) and Crooked Timber (https://crookedtimber.org). Leiter Reports is the preeminent blog in professional philosophy, reporting “news and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics.” It is edited by Prof. Brian Leiter (Chicago), receives over 300,000 monthly visits, and is ranked 233,978 on SimilarWeb.com (as of 12 September 2026). Crooked Timber is a popular blog focusing on moral and political issues, with significant contributions from 15 core editors, many of whom are philosophers. It receives around 100,000 monthly visits and is ranked 580,800 on SimilarWeb.com (as of 12 September 2026).
A database of ~2100 professional philosophers’ emails was compiled from the addresses available on the websites of the world’s top-rated philosophy departments, as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (https://www.philosophicalgourmet.com).
After the scenarios, we ask professional philosophers about their areas of specialization, broad philosophical and political views, and demographic characteristics.
Professional philosophers may of course be from anywhere in the world. The locations we selected in the Trial Information section of this entry reflect the location of our Prolific sample, which we detail next.
We expect to receive approximately 550 responses after exclusions, as in Ferguson et al. (2026), but we will include all responses passing our exclusion criteria received in the specified time frame (see the Planned Number of Observations section).
*Participants: public*
We will recruit participants from the public via the online subject-pool operated by Prolific. We will restrict participation using Prolific's filters such that they are resident in one of the countries listed in the Trial Information (US or UK) and that English is their Primary Language, First Language, Fluent Language, and Earliest Language in Life. We will recruit 300 participants from each location (with the expectation that up to 50 are excluded by the criteria below in total over the two locations). This follows the roughly 50/50 composition of the public sample across these two locations in Ferguson et al. (2026). Following the primary questions, Prolific participants answer basic demographic questions (and are not asked opinion and professional questions relevant to philosophers).
*Exclusion criteria*
From either sample, we will exclude a participant's data if:
(a) their response time on any of the main question pages (covering points (i)-(iii) above) is less than 2 seconds;
(b) their response is flagged by Qualtrics' or Prolific's built-in bot detector;
(c) their IP address falls within a listed subnet of known VPNs and data centers (available here: https://github.com/X4BNet/lists_vpn, we will add an amendment to this registry with a permalink to the version that we apply);
(d) their response is incomplete.
For participants on Prolific, we exclude their data if:
(e) they fail the CAPTCHA (in which they are unable to complete the study);
(f) they fail two attention checks (in which case they are returned to Prolific).
From the philosopher sample, we will exclude a participant's data if:
(g) they provide a non-institutional email domain (we intend to collect data from academic philosophers and philosophy graduate students only);
(h) they declare themselves to be undergraduate students.
Data from participants meeting any of the criteria (a)-(h) will not be analyzed or presented. We will report how many exclusions there are, and of what type.
*References*
Ferguson, B., Matthews, P. H., Ronayne, D., & Veneziani, R. (2026). What exploitation is. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.70058