Dr. Enrico Rubaltelli on “Moral investing: Psychological motivations and implications.”

Psychological Research Stories

In today’s episode, I share an interview that I conducted with Dr. Enrico Rubaltelli, who is an assistant professor at Padova. His research generally is focused on judgments and decision making. The focus of the interview was an article published in Judgment and Decision Making titled, “Moral investing: Psychological motivations and implications.” The abstract for the article is provided below for your convenience. To share comments or questions, please share them in the comment section below, or send me a message by going to methodologyforpsychology.org/contact. Thank you for listening.

Mentioned Resources

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Misbehaving

Abstract

“In four experiments we showed that investors are not only interested in maximizing returns but have non-financial goals, too. We considered what drives the decision to invest ethically and the impact this strategy has on people’s evaluation of investment performance. In Study 1, participants who chose a moral portfolio (over an immoral one) reported being less interested in maximizing their gains and more interested in being true to their moral values. These participants also reported feeling lower disappointment upon learning that a different decision could have yield a better outcome. In Studies 2 and 3, we replicated these findings when investors decided not to invest in immoral assets, rather than when they choose to invest morally. In Study 4, we found similar results using the same industrial sector in both the moral and the immoral conditions and providing participants with information about the expected return of the portfolio they were presented with. These findings lend empirical support to the conclusion that investors have both utilitarian (financial) goals and expressive (non-financial) ones and show how non-financial motivations can influence the reaction to unsatisfactory investment performance.”

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