Who finds what repugnant and why?

Christina Leuker, Lasare Samartzidis, Ralph Hertwig

Many people consider it morally impermissible to trade body parts such as kidneys; civil duties such as buying out of jury duty or permits for having children on the free market. All of these are examples of repugnant transactions (Roth, 2007; Sandel, 2013). When and why does repugnance arise? We asked respondents to evaluate 51 disputed market transactions; and to characterise them on various properties (e.g., to what extent does the transaction pose a risk to the seller?). We also assessed individual differences (preferences for different ethical principles; political ideology; market attitudes; personality). A factor analysis revealed that many properties were correlated and could be assigned to five distinct factors—moral outrage, need for regulation, incommensurability, exploitation, and unknown risk. On the individual level, respondents who consider some goods as sacred; consider religion important, subscribe to deontological reasoning and conservative political views all viewed the transactions in our set to be more repugnant; whereas those who value market efficiency made the opposite assessment. These results were consistent in two independent samples. These results can help identify mismatches between peoples’ assessments and current regulations; and help anticipate responses to novel markets that have not yetbeen scrutinised in public debate.