Business Ethics Chapter 3 Glossary

Narrow self-interest is motivation arising from only the welfare of one’s own ego and body.

A contractarian ethic is the view that ethics is an enforced contract among ethical egoists designed to prevent dilemmas of cooperation.

The paradox of egoism is a weakness of ethical egoism that arises because ethical egoists cannot achieve some states of affairs greatly in their self-interest because they always ought to act selfishly.

A prisoner’s dilemma is a type of game where both players have dominant strategies that, when played, result in an equilibrium with payoffs smaller than if each had played another strategy.

A dominant strategy is a strategy in a game that yields a higher payoff regardless of the strategy chosen by the other player.

A payoff matrix in game theory is a table that shows each player’s payoff for every possible combination of strategies.

Ethical egoism is the ethical theory that people always ought to act to maximize their own self-interest.

Psychological egoism is the empirical theory that people always do act to maximize their own self-interest.