Defaults and Moral Decision Making

A large body of empirical research has found that non-binding default options have a substantial effect on individual decision-making. In particular, there are large default effects for ``moral'' or ``self-other'' decisions such as organ donation. Do these observed self-other default effects obtain through a psychological mechanism distinct from those of self-self default effects, rendering self-other default effects particularly large? Or do they obtain through standard default effect mechanisms, such as psychological anchoring or switching costs? Existing research has not answered this question. We will fill this gap through a lab experiment that measures self-self and self-other default effects in otherwise comparable decisions. We will directly compare the magnitudes of these effects to provide novel evidence on the role of self-other tradeoffs in decisions with default options.