Decision-Makers Overestimate the Reputational Costs of Necessary Evils

Decision-makers must often choose whether to commit necessary evils (i.e., cause harm to produce a benefit), such as allocating punishments or redistributing resources. Existing moral psychological work on instrumental harm suggests that people should react poorly to necessary evils and condemn those who commit them. However, four preregistered studies (total N = 1,622), using both survey experiments and incentive-compatible games, reveal that targets judge decision-makers who commit a broad range of everyday necessary evils more positively than decision-makers expect. Decision-makers overestimate how much emotional harm targets experience and underestimate how much instrumental value targets recognize. As a result, decision-makers overestimate the reputational costs of performing necessary evils, which can serve as a barrier to performing them. This research highlights the theoretical importance of studying social-moral phenomena (such as instrumental harm) in everyday contexts and provides practical insight into how to encourage decision-makers to perform societally beneficial, but seemingly harmful actions.