Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility

71 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2020 Last revised: 29 Oct 2020

See all articles by Alex Imas

Alex Imas

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

George Loewenstein

Carnegie Mellon University - Department of Social and Decision Sciences

Carey Morewedge

Boston University - Questrom School of Business

Date Written: July 22, 2020

Abstract

People exploit flexibility in mental accounting to relax psychological constraints on spending. Four studies demonstrate this in the context of moral behavior. The first study replicates prior findings that people donate more money to charity when they earned it through unethical versus ethical means. However, when the unethically-earned money is first “laundered”––the cash is physically exchanged for the same amount but from a different arbitrary source—people spent it as if it was earned ethically. This mental money laundering represents an extreme fungibility violation: exchanging “dirty” money for the same sum coming from a “clean” source significantly changed people’s propensity to spend it prosocially. The second study demonstrates that mental money laundering generalizes to cases in which ethically and unethically earned money is mixed. When gains from ethical and unethical sources were pooled, people spent the entire pooled sum as if it was ethically earned. The last two studies provide mixed support for the prediction that people actively seek out laundering opportunities for unethically earned money, suggesting partial sophistication about these effects. These findings provide new evidence for the ease with which people can rationalize misbehavior, and have implications for consumer choice, corporate behavior and public policy.

Keywords: Mental accounting; moral behavior; source dependence; money laundering

JEL Classification: D01, D03, D64

Suggested Citation

Imas, Alex and Loewenstein, George F. and Morewedge, Carey, Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility (July 22, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3662841 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3662841

Alex Imas (Contact Author)

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

George F. Loewenstein

Carnegie Mellon University - Department of Social and Decision Sciences ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States
412-268-8787 (Phone)
412-268-6938 (Fax)

Carey Morewedge

Boston University - Questrom School of Business ( email )

595 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA MA 02215
United States

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