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David Dubois, Derek Rucker & Adam Galinsky
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 2015, Pages 436-449
Abstract:
Are the rich more unethical than the poor? To answer this question, the current research introduces a key conceptual distinction between selfish and unethical behavior. Based on this distinction, the current article offers 2 novel findings that illuminate the relationship between social class and unethical behavior. First, the effects of social class on unethical behavior are not invariant; rather, the effects of social class are moderated by whether unethical behavior benefits the self or others. Replicating past work, social class positively predicted unethical behavior; however, this relationship was only observed when that behavior was self-beneficial. When unethical behavior was performed to benefit others, social class negatively predicted unethical behavior; lower class individuals were more likely than upper class individuals to engage in unethical behavior. Overall, social class predicts people’s tendency to behave selfishly, rather than predicting unethical behavior per se. Second, individuals’ sense of power drove the effects of social class on unethical behavior. Evidence for this relationship was provided in three forms. First, income, but not education level, predicted unethical behavior. Second, feelings of power mediated the effect of social class on unethical behavior, but feelings of status did not. Third, two distinct manipulations of power produced the same moderation by self-versus-other beneficiary as was found with social class. The current theoretical framework and data both synthesize and help to explain a range of findings in the social class and power literatures.
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Joshua Tybur et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Multiple recent studies report that measures of pathogen avoidance (e.g., disgust sensitivity) correlate with political ideology. This relationships have been interpreted as suggesting that certain political views (specifically, those views that are categorized as socially conservative) function to mitigate the pathogen threats posed either by intergroup interactions or departures from traditional societal norms, which sometimes evolve culturally for anti-pathogen functions. We propose and test the alternative hypothesis that pathogen avoidance relates to conservatism indirectly via sexual strategies (e.g., relatively monogamous versus relatively promiscuous). Specifically, we argue that individuals who are more invested in avoiding pathogens follow a more monogamous mating strategy to mitigate against pathogens transmitted during sexual contact, and individuals following a more monogamous mating strategy adopt socially conservative political ideologies to support their reproductive interests. Results from three studies (N’s = 819, 238, and 248) using multiple measures of pathogen avoidance, sexual strategies, and ideology support this account, with sexual strategies fully mediating the relationship between measures of pathogen avoidance and conservatism in each study.
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On the Origins of Dishonesty: From Parents to Children
Daniel Houser et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2015
Abstract:
Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different economic environments. We begin by developing a simple model that highlights the channels through which one can increase or decrease dishonest acts. We lend empirical insights into this model by using an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child rather than the parent. In this spirit, there is also an interesting effect of children on parents’ behavior: in the child’s presence, parents act more honestly, but there are gender differences. Parents act more dishonestly in front of sons than daughters. This finding has the potential of shedding light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults.
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How Foreign Language Shapes Moral Judgment
Janet Geipel, Constantinos Hadjichristidis & Luca Surian
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 8–17
Abstract:
We investigated whether and how processing information in a foreign language as opposed to the native language affects moral judgments. Participants judged the moral wrongness of several private actions, such as consensual incest, that were depicted as harmless and presented in either the native or a foreign language. The use of a foreign language promoted less severe moral judgments and less confidence in them. Harmful and harmless social norm violations, such as saying a white lie to get a reduced fare, were also judged more leniently. The results do not support explanations based on facilitated deliberation, misunderstanding, or the adoption of a universalistic stance. We propose that the influence of foreign language is best explained by a reduced activation of social and moral norms when making moral judgments.
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Threats to Social Identity Can Trigger Social Deviance
Peter Belmi et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We hypothesized that threats to people’s social (i.e., group) identity can trigger deviant attitudes and behaviors. A correlational study and five experiments showed that experiencing or recalling situations associated with the devaluation of a social identity caused participants to endorse or engage in deviant actions, including stealing, cheating, and lying. The effect was driven by the tendency to construe social identity threats not as isolated incidents but as symbolic of the continuing devaluation and disrespectful treatment of one’s group. Supplementing sociological approaches to deviance and delinquency, the results suggest the relevance and utility of a social-psychological account.
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Liz Wang & Lisa Calvano
Journal of Business Ethics, February 2015, Pages 591-602
Abstract:
Although ethics instruction has become an accepted part of the business school curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, some scholars have questioned its effectiveness, and research results have been mixed. However, studies yield interesting results regarding certain factors that influence the ethicality of business students and may impact the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. One of these factors is gender. Using personal and business ethics scenarios, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and business ethics education on moral judgment. We then analyze the relationships between gender and business ethics education on personal ethical perspectives. Our results indicate that women are generally more inclined to act ethically than men, but paradoxically women who have had business ethics instruction are less likely to respond ethically to business situations. In addition, men may be more responsive to business ethics education than women. Finally, women’s personal ethical orientations may become more relativistic after taking a business ethics class.
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Into the wild? How a film can change adolescents' values
Anna Döring & Alessa Hillbrink
Journal of Adolescence, April 2015, Pages 78–82
Abstract:
In adolescence, behavior and attitudes are constantly rethought and value priorities are established. Still, there is hardly any research addressing how values are shaped throughout this sensitive period. We employed an experimental design, testing whether adolescents' values can be influenced by exposure to a film. In our study, 154 German adolescents (80 females, ages 13–15) were randomly assigned to an experimental group that watched excerpts from the film “Into the wild” or to a control group. Value change was assessed in a pre-post-test design with a one-week interval. As hypothesized, values changed in the direction of those displayed by the film's protagonist: Universalism values increased significantly and conformity values decreased significantly as compared to the control group. Our findings suggest that single exposure to a film may initiate value change, indicating that not only major live events, but also everyday experiences significantly affect adolescents' values.
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Andrea Pereira et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to the “democracy-as-value” hypothesis, democracy has become an ideological belief system providing social value to democratic individuals, groups and institutions, granting legitimacy to their actions (even if dishonest or violent), and protecting them from consecutive punishments. The present research investigates the extent to which this legitimizing process is based on the individual endorsement of democratic principles. Across four experiments, following the misdeed of a (few) group member(s), respondents who valued democratic group organization and democracy in general expressed more lenient retributive justice judgments towards democratic (as compared with nondemocratic) offender groups. These findings shed light on the ways in which democratic ideology infuses justice judgments.
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Affective and Physiological Responses to the Suffering of Others: Compassion and Vagal Activity
Jennifer Stellar et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Compassion is an affective response to another’s suffering and a catalyst of prosocial behavior. In the present studies, we explore the peripheral physiological changes associated with the experience of compassion. Guided by long-standing theoretical claims, we propose that compassion is associated with activation in the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system through the vagus nerve. Across 4 studies, participants witnessed others suffer while we recorded physiological measures, including heart rate, respiration, skin conductance, and a measure of vagal activity called respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Participants exhibited greater RSA during the compassion induction compared with a neutral control (Study 1), another positive emotion (Study 2), and a prosocial emotion lacking appraisals of another person’s suffering (Study 3). Greater RSA during the experience of compassion compared with the neutral or control emotion was often accompanied by lower heart rate and respiration but no difference in skin conductance. In Study 4, increases in RSA during compassion positively predicted an established composite of compassion-related words, continuous self-reports of compassion, and nonverbal displays of compassion. Compassion, a core affective component of empathy and prosociality, is associated with heightened parasympathetic activity.
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Is Corporate Social Responsibility Performance Associated with Tax Avoidance?
Roman Lanis & Grant Richardson
Journal of Business Ethics, March 2015, Pages 439-457
Abstract:
This study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance. Employing a matched sample of 434 firm-year observations (i.e., 217 tax-avoidant and 217 non-tax-avoidant firm-year observations) from the Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini database over the period 2003–2009, our logit regression results show that the higher the level of CSR performance of a firm, the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance. Our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance. Finally, the results from our additional analysis show that the CSR categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of CSR performance that reduce tax avoidance.
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Irene Cristofori et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Given the determinant role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in valuation, we examined whether vmPFC lesions also modulate how people scale political beliefs. Patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI; N=102) and healthy controls (HC; N=31) were tested on the Political Belief Task, where they rated 75 statements expressing political opinions concerned with welfare, economy, political involvement, civil rights, war and security. Each statement was rated for level of agreement and scaled along three dimensions: radicalism, individualism, and conservatism. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) analysis showed that diminished scores for the radicalism dimension (i.e., statements were rated as less radical than the norms) were associated with lesions in bilateral vmPFC. After dividing the pTBI patients into three groups, according to lesion location (i.e., vmPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [dlPFC] and parietal cortex), we found that the vmPFC, but not the dlPFC, group had reduced radicalism scores compared to parietal and HC groups. These findings highlight the crucial role of the vmPFC in appropriately valuing political behaviors and may explain certain inappropriate social judgments observed in patients with vmPFC lesions.
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Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empirical evidence and common sense tell us that most people are responsive to economic incentives as well as social and moral norms, and that these sets of incentives are often in tension. The tradeoffs between moral and financial preferences are particularly salient in much legal decision-making, especially in the private law context. This paper presents the methods and results of two new behavioral studies designed to elicit evidence for how people factor both monetary and non-monetary incentives in breach of contract. Participants in Study 1 played a Trust game modified to capture key features of a breach decision. Subjects were offered increasing payouts to break the deal they had made with an anonymous partner. 18.6% participants indicated willingness to break a deal for any amount of profit, and over a quarter (27.9%) were unwilling to breach even when offered $24, almost triple the initial payout, with the remaining subjects identifying a break-point somewhere in between. Study 2 used hypothetical scenarios asking subjects to take the perspectives of buyers or sellers and to indicate how much profit or savings an alternate deal would have to offer in order for the subject to breach the original contract, and found a similar curve. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these methods and preliminary findings may be deployed for more fine-grained inquiries into when individuals do and do not choose a financially attractive breach about which they have moral reservations.