Positioning moral motivations within the framework provided by Schwartz’ (1992) values theory, we ran three dictator game studies (total N = 256) investigating moral integrity and moral hypocrisy. We adapted Batson’s (et al., 1997; et al., 1999; et al., 2002) landmark research design into the experimental economics laboratory (Study 1), and showed that the behavioral inconsistency – out of 64 dictators, all 26 who chose to flip a coin to determine the allocation of money ended up with the self-favoring outcome – revealed in such a design is indeed indicative of dishonest claims to morality (arguably the core of moral hypocrisy), and not overpowered moral integrity. Supporting this interpretation, dictators who masked their selfishness behind the coin flip were motivated by high Conformity values (Study 1), and thereby similar to participants who made more obviously disingenuous claims to morality (Study 2). Further, dictators did generally not select the coin flip in case the result could not be rigged (only four out of 32 dictators did this; Study 3). Universalism and Benevolence values were predictive of moral integrity (Studies 1 and 3). Morality ratings of behavior generally showed both self-serving and outcome bias.
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