When and Why We Partner in Crime: Comparing the Unethical Decisions of Dyads and Individuals

Abstract

While joint ethical violations are fairly common in the workplace, sports teams, and academic settings, little research has studied such collaborative wrongdoings. Our work examines whether people are more unethical when they make decisions jointly with a partner (i.e., reach one shared decision as a dyad) versus alone. Four experiments show that people use joint ethical violations (“partnering-in-crime”) strategically to generate social bonding. Thus, dyads make more unethical decisions than individuals only when social bonding is needed, that is, when the dyad members do not know each other. In such cases, joint unethical decisions offer an avenue for bonding. However, this effect is attenuated when dyad partners build rapport with each other prior to the joint decision-making. In such cases, dyads are equally ethical as individual decision-makers. Our findings offer insights into the social aspects of unethical behavior and have broad practical implications for enhancing ethicality in the workplace.