Behavioral Ethics Research Research Articles

When Are Norms Prescriptive? Understanding and Clarifying the Role of Norms in Behavioral Ethics Research

Research on ethical norms has grown in recent years, but imprecise language has made it unclear when these norms prescribe “what ought to be” and when they merely describe behaviors or perceptions (“what is”). Studies of ethical norms, moreover, tend not to investigate whether participants were influenced by the prescriptive aspect of the norm; the studies primarily demonstrate, rather, that people will mimic the behaviors or perceptions of others, which provides evidence for the already well-substantiated social proof theory. In this review article, we delineate three streams of norms research in business ethics: behavioral, perceptual, and prescriptive. We argue that by properly categorizing norms, and designing studies to investigate when prescriptions, more than mere mimicry, improve ethical outcomes in organizations, researchers can enhance managers’ efforts to promote ethical outcomes in organizations.

Above the law? How motivated moral reasoning shapes evaluations of high performer unethicality.

Recent revelations have brought to light the misconduct of high performers across various fields and occupations who were promoted up the organizational ladder rather than punished for their unethical behavior. Drawing on principles of motivated moral reasoning, we investigate how employee performance biases supervisors' moral judgment of employee unethical behavior and how supervisors' performance-focus shapes how they account for moral judgments in promotion recommendations. We test our model in three studies: a field study of 587 employees and their 124 supervisors at a Fortune 500 telecom company, an experiment with two samples of working adults, and an experiment that directly varied explanatory mechanisms. Evidence revealed a moral double standard such that supervisors rendered less punitive judgment of the unethical acts of higher performing employees. In turn, supervisors' bottom-line mentality (i.e., fixation on achieving results) influenced the degree to which they incorporated their punitive judgments into promotability considerations. By revealing the moral leniency afforded to higher performers and the uneven consequences meted out by supervisors, our results carry implications for behavioral ethics research and for organizations seeking to retain and promote their higher performers while also maintaining ethical standards that are applied fairly across employees. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Effect of Creativity on Unethical Behavior

Although previous studies have illustrated the dark side of creativity, intermediary mechanisms have not been sufficiently explored. We used moral licensing theory to expand a new interpretation mechanism of the relationship between creativity and unethical behavior. We tested our hypotheses with an experimental study and a multiwave survey in China. Study 1 (N = 143 postgraduates) showed that creativity increased moral credential. The results of Study 2 (N = 180) replicated Study 1's findings and further showed that the effect of creativity on unethical behavior was mediated by moral credential. Study 2 further expanded the boundary condition of the dark side of creativity from the perspective of perceived prevalence of creativity. Theoretical implications for creativity and behavioral ethics research are discussed, as well as directions for future research.

Masks as a moral symbol: Masks reduce wearers’ deviant behavior in China during COVID-19

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, mask wearing has become a global phenomenon. How do masks influence wearers' behavior in everyday life? We examine the effect of masks on wearers' deviant behavior in China, where mask wearing is mostly a public-health issue rather than a political issue. Drawing on behavioral ethics research, we test two competing hypotheses: (a) masks disinhibit wearers' deviant behavior by increasing their sense of anonymity and (b) masks are a moral symbol that reduces wearers' deviant behavior by heightening their moral awareness. The latter hypothesis was consistently supported by 10 studies (including direct replications) using mixed methods (e.g., traffic camera recording analysis, observational field studies, experiments, and natural field experiment) and different measures of deviant behavior (e.g., running a red light, bike parking in no-parking zones, cheating for money, and deviant behavior in the library). Our research (n = 68,243) is among the first to uncover the psychological and behavioral consequences of mask wearing beyond its health benefits.

Preference Change and Behavioral Ethics: Can States Create Ethical People?

Abstract Law and economics scholarship suggests that, in appropriate cases, the law can improve people’s behavior by changing their preferences. For example, the law can curb discriminatory hiring practices by providing employers with information that might change their discriminatory preference. Supposedly, if employers no longer prefer one class of employees to another, they will simply stop discriminating, with no need for further legal intervention. The current Article aims to add some depth to this familiar analysis by introducing the insights of behavioral ethics into the law and economics literature on preference change. Behavioral ethics research shows that wrongdoing often originates from semi-deliberative or non-deliberative cognitive processes. These findings suggest that the process of preference change through the use of the law is markedly more complicated and nuanced than previously appreciated. For instance, even if an employer’s explicit discriminatory stance is changed, and the employer no longer consciously prefers one class of employees over another, discriminatory behavior might persist if it originates from semi-conscious, habitual, or non-deliberative decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, actual change in behavior might necessitate a close engagement with people’s level of moral awareness. We discuss the institutional and normative implications of these insights and evaluate their significance for the attempt to improve preferences through the different functions of the legal system.

Making Behavioral Ethics Research More Useful for Ethics Management Practice: Embracing Complexity Using a Design Science Approach

AbstractResearch on behavioral ethics is thriving and intends to offer advice that can be used by practitioners to improve the practice of ethics management. However, three barriers prevent this research from generating genuinely useful advice. It does not sufficiently focus on interventions that can be directly designed by management. The typical research designs used in behavioral ethics research require such a reduction of complexity that the resulting findings are not very useful for practitioners. Worse still, attempts to make behavioral ethics research more useful by formulating simple recommendations are potentially very damaging. In response to these limitations, this article proposes to complement the current behavioral ethics research agenda that takes an ‘explanatory science’ approach with a research agenda that uses a ‘design science’ approach. Proposed by Joan van Aken and building on earlier work by Herbert Simon, this approach aims to develop field-tested ‘design propositions’ that present often complex but useful recommendations for practitioners. Using a ‘CIMO-logic’, these propositions specify how an ‘intervention’ can generate very different ‘outcomes’ through various ‘mechanisms’, depending on the ‘context’. An illustration and a discussion of the contours of this new research agenda for ethics management demonstrate its advantages as well as its feasibility. The article concludes with a reflection on the feasibility of embracing complexity without drowning in a sea of complicated contingencies and without being paralyzed by the awareness that all interventions can have both desirable and undesirable effects.

Preferences Change & Behavioral Ethics: Can States Create Ethical People?

Law and economics scholarship suggests that, in appropriate cases, the law can improve people’s behavior by changing their preferences. For instance, the law can curb discriminatory hiring practices by providing employers with information that might change their preferences towards discriminatory hiring. Supposedly, if employers no longer prefer one class of employees to another, they will simply stop discriminating, with no need for further legal intervention. The current paper adds some depth to this familiar analysis by introducing the insights of behavioral ethics into the law and economics literature on preference change. Behavioral ethics research shows that wrongdoing often originates with semi-deliberative or non-deliberative cognitive processes. These findings suggest that the process of preference change, through the use of the law, is markedly more complicated and nuanced than previously appreciated. Thus, for instance, even if an employer’s explicit discriminatory stance is changed, and the employer no longer consciously prefers one class of employees over another, discriminatory behavior might still surface if it originates with semi-conscious, habitual, or non-deliberative decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, actual change in behavior might necessitate a close engagement with people’s level of moral awareness. We discuss the institutional and normative implications of these insights and evaluate their significance for the attempt to improve preferences through the different functions of the legal system.

Behavioral Ethics, Deception, and Legal Negotiation

Research in the field of behavioral ethics finds that much unethical behavior is not the result of conscious amorality. Rather, cognitive and motivational biases enable and even encourage people who consider themselves to be pro-social to act badly without ever recognizing the shortcomings of their behavior. This Article, delivered as the annual Chris Beecroft, Jr. Memorial Lecture on Dispute Resolution at the UNLV Boyd School of Law, explores how the findings of behavioral ethics can help to better understand, predict, and potentially combat unethical behavior in legal negotiation. Its admittedly pessimistic conclusion is that legal negotiation is an activity that is likely to be rife with behavior that is unethical, or at least presses hard against ethical boundaries. The Article summarizes the core findings of behavioral ethics research, explains why this research suggests that deceptive behavior will be common in negotiation, argues that the agency role played by lawyers in legal negotiation likely also encourages unethical behavior, and, finally, propose steps that lawmakers or negotiators themselves might take to reduce the amount of deceptive behavior in legal negotiation.

Do Good Principals Do Bad Things? Examining Bounds Of Ethical Behavior In The Context Of High-Stakes Accountability

ABSTRACT Cheating and unethical behavior in the context of high-stakes accountability has been well documented. Recently, the US Department of Education found Texas schools failing to comply with the nation’s special education law as a result of a state accountability policy. This article examines how a group of principals recognized for their effectiveness in special education (a) understood the state policy and (b) the social and psychological forces that influenced their leadership. Bounded ethicality and behavioral ethics research are used as a theoretical model to examine principal perceptions and actions. Conclusions inform next generation research and new approaches to leadership development.

Behavioral Ethics as Compliance

This chapter studies the implications of behavioral ethics research to questions of legal compliance. Behavioral ethics emphasizes the concept of bounded ethicality, referring to a long list of biases and cognitive limitations that prevent people from making a full and candid evaluation of the ethicality of their own actions. In other words, people often act unethically not because they made a conscious choice to behave badly, but because they were able to ignore, downplay, or justify their own misconduct. This chapter explores the meaning of behavioral ethics findings for questions of compliance with the law. That is, if people often ignore or downplay their own unethical choices, how can law-makers and regulators act to improve compliance with the law? The chapter describes the central relevant findings of behavioral ethics research, the challenges these findings pose for legal compliance, and outlines possible solutions. In particular, we advocate a novel regulatory approach utilizing ethical nudges: regulatory interventions that are designed to improve ethical deliberations by potential wrongdoers.

Reconceptualizing goal setting’s dark side: The ethical consequences of learning versus outcome goals

Goal-setting theory is one of the most researched and practically applied theories in the field of organizational behavior. A core tenet of this theory is that specific and challenging goals increase performance. However, recent behavioral ethics research has left unresolved questions regarding how high performance goals can be used to motivate performance without also encouraging unethical behavior. Drawing on achievement goal theory, we consider the role of goal type in arguing that an over-use of outcome goals as performance drivers and an over-reliance on goal difficulty as a motivating mechanism have both created goal-setting’s dark side and obscured potential remedies. Extending previous research, we integrate the goal-setting literature with regulatory focus theory to demonstrate that outcome goals stimulate a prevention focus, which increases unethical behavior as individuals engage in questionable conduct in order to prevent goal failure. This indirect effect is exacerbated as goal difficulty increases. In contrast to outcome goals, learning goals reduce prevention focus and unethical behavior without decreasing performance—even when goals are difficult. Across both field and laboratory studies, we find convergent support for our proposed model. Our findings extend existing theory and also offer practical insight into harnessing the motivating power of goals without simultaneously increasing unethicality.

Differentiated Regulation Across People and Situations: A Behavioral Ethics Perspective to Personalized Law

Wrongdoing is ubiquitous. Media outlets constantly report an endless stream of deleterious human behavior, from sexual harassment and fraud in financial markets to corporate and political corruption. Recent developments in behavioral ethics research suggest that these ills will forever accompany human interaction due to the phenomenon of “bounded ethicality,” or people’s limited ability to conduct an objective and candid moral examination of their own actions. When evaluating the ethical implications of their behavior, individuals have been shown to be biased and to systematically underestimate or ignore the magnitude and effect of their own misconduct. Such findings have troubling implications from a law enforcement perspective. That is, if wrongdoers are able to convince themselves they are doing nothing wrong, how can regulators and policy makers ever successfully reduce or prevent misconduct? Essentially, recognizing the power of bounded ethicality reinforces the idea that destructive human behavior may be unavoidable, and that it may never be possible to reduce the systematic wrongdoing currently observed throughout society. In response to the challenges that bounded ethicality poses, this Article explores how using big data analytics contributes to curbing both ethical bias and the results of bounded ethicality. The paper is breaking new ground in being the first to explore the intersections between the growing literature on behavioral ethics, highlighting the concept of bounded ethicality, and the scholarship and research on data-driven law enforcement. We suggest that to combat bounded ethicality, regulators should use ethical nudges, regulatory interventions designed to improve ethical deliberation by potential wrongdoers. We show that the use of big data analytics is crucial for the successful deployment of such regulatory interventions, for several reasons. First, ethical nudges must be deployed in real time, when potential perpetrators are making their decisions regarding possibly unethical actions. Big data analysis can facilitate this type of timely regulatory response in its shift from ex post inquiry to ex ante prediction. By collecting and analyzing data on the antecedents of wrongdoing, big data analytics can enable regulators to respond at opportune moments and situations, rather than engage perpetrators ex post facto. Second, ethical nudges must be targeted rather than general. If individuals are nudged constantly, ethical nudges will lose their effectiveness due to the phenomenon of ethical numbing. By identifying the situations that breed unethicality and limiting nudges to those situations, big data analysis can ensure that people are not overexposed to ethical nudges, thereby maintaining their efficacy. Third, ethical nudges must also be tailored to the characteristics of the specific bias that is causing unethical behavior in each specific case. Using big data analytic, together with behavioral ethics insights, regulators can collect information that will indicate the nature of the ethical bias operating in specific instances of wrongdoing, and thus be able to deploy the appropriate regulatory response. In addition to presenting several other advantages of using big data analytics as part of the efforts to reduce bounded ethicality, this paper suggests a full menu of regulatory tools designed to improve moral deliberation and discusses the importance of big data analytics as a basis for their use. Our analysis calls for a reorientation of existing practices of data-driven law enforcement, to make it more suited for the regulation of bounded ethicality. We show that this reorientation is also necessary for reasons related to the legitimacy of data-driven law enforcement. Data-driven law enforcement currently adopts a personalized focus, attempting to identify individuals who are more likely to commit crimes. This approach is highly problematic, raising privacy concerns and perpetuating discriminatory practices. Conversely, the approach we advocate calls for a focus on situations, not individuals, as behavioral ethics studies show that bounded ethicality is primarily situation driven. Therefore, big data analytics should be used to identify situations that breed unethicality, thus shifting the focus to individuals more likely to act badly. This use of big data analytics is less harmful to individuals’ privacy, as it does not focus on personalizing legal treatments.

Bolstering Managers’ Resistance to Temptation via the Firm’s Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility

Behavioral ethics research has focused predominantly on how the attributes of individuals influence their ethicality. Relatively neglected has been how macro-level factors such as the behavior of firms influence members’ ethicality. Researchers have noted specifically that we know little about how a firm’s CSR influences members’ behaviors. We seek to better merge these literatures and gain a deeper understanding of the role macro-level influences have on manager’s ethicality. Based on agency theory and social identity theory, we hypothesize that a company’s commitment to CSR shifts managers’ focus away from self-interests toward the interests of the firm, bolstering resistance to temptation. We propose this occurs through self-categorization and collective identification processes. We conduct a 2 × 2 factorial experiment in which managers make expense decisions for a company with commitment to CSR either present or absent, and temptation either present or absent. Results indicate that under temptation, managers make decisions consistent with self-interest. More importantly, we find when commitment to CSR is present, managers are more likely to make ethical decisions in the presence of temptation. Overall, this research highlights the interactive role of two key contextual factors—temptation and firm CSR commitment—in influencing managers’ ethical decisions. While limited research has highlighted the positive effects that a firm’s CSR has on its employees’ attitudes, the current results demonstrate CSR’s effects on ethical behavior and imply that through conducting and communicating its CSR efforts internally, firms can in part limit the deleterious effects of temptation on managers’ decisions.

Nudging Corporate Compliance

Companies are nudging. That is, they are using the tools of behavioral science as pioneered by behavioral economists and promoted by policymakers to steer employees toward welfare-maximizing options. While companies began nudging to increase employee health, safety, and financial literacy, choice architecture is now being used to make employees more ethical. “Behavioral ethics nudging” is seen as the future of corporate compliance because it offers an evidence-based, cost effective way to reduce the risks of respondeat superior liability. Amid that promise, however, lies a nagging unease. Behavioral ethics research demonstrates that ethical decision making is influenced, often subconsciously, by situational and social factors. When a company alters the conditions under which its employees make decisions, their ethical behavior can be changed without them knowing it. Thus, the intent of behavioral ethics nudging may be laudable—to increase employee ethicality and improve compliance—but it is also susceptible to becoming a tool of unwanted behavioral manipulation. This Article undertakes the first detailed analysis of the role of behavioral ethics nudging in corporate compliance. Viewing the issue from an empirical and normative lens, it finds that while nudging offers important compliance opportunities, it must be implemented with caution. That is because nudging employees to be more ethical is conceptually distinct from governmental nudges popularized as a way of promoting public welfare. Companies that simply import public policy nudges into the workplace may find them wholly ineffective as a compliance strategy. Moreover, behavioral ethics nudging may violate deeply held notions of personal autonomy, especially when it surreptitiously capitalizes on employees’ cognitive irrationalities. While some autonomy costs may be justified under legal doctrines and consequentialist analysis, a significant question remains whether behavioral ethics nudges are ethical themselves. Drawing on this analysis, which is supported by extensive behavioral ethics research, the Article offers a simple framework companies can use when contemplating employing behavioral ethics nudging as part of their compliance regimes.

Using Behavioral Ethics to Curb Corruption

Even people who think of themselves as being ethical (“good people”) may engage in corrupt actions. In fact, the situations that seem least problematic can sometimes cause good people to behave immorally. Behavioral ethics research has demonstrated that various unconscious and self-deceptive mental processes promote such behavior in those individuals. To reduce the frequency of misbehavior by normally well-intentioned individuals, policymakers need to be aware that classic approaches to limiting corruption sometimes increase the likelihood that good people will engage in misconduct. Regulators also need to expand their toolbox beyond formal ethical codes and financial incentives by adding preventive interventions that are based on behavioral ethics research.

Blind loyalty? When group loyalty makes us see evil or engage in it

Loyalty often drives corruption. Corporate scandals, political machinations, and sports cheating highlight how loyalty’s pernicious nature manifests in collusion, conspiracy, cronyism, nepotism, and other forms of cheating. Yet loyalty is also touted as an ethical principle that guides behavior. Drawing on moral psychology and behavioral ethics research, we developed hypotheses about when group loyalty fosters ethical behavior and when it fosters corruption. Across nine studies, we found that individuals primed with loyalty cheated less than those not primed (Study 1A and 1B). Members more loyal to their fraternities (Study 2A) and students more loyal to their study groups (Study 2B) also cheated less than their less loyal counterparts due to greater ethical salience when they pledged their loyalty (Studies 3A and 3B). Importantly, competition moderated these effects: when competition was high, members more loyal to their fraternities (Study 4) or individuals primed with loyalty (Studies 5A and 5B) cheated more.

Decreasing Unethical Decisions: The Role of Morality-Based Individual Differences

Given the potential dangers of unethical decisions in the workplace, it has become increasingly important for managers to hire, and promote into leadership positions, those who are morally inclined. Behavioral ethics research has contributed to this effort by examining an array of individual difference variables (e.g., locus of control) that play a role in morality. However, past research has focused mostly on direct causal effects and not so much on the processes (including mediation) through which different factors, especially those that are morality based, decrease unethical choices. The purpose of the current research is to examine the process, which includes both subconscious and conscious decision pathways, through which moral attentiveness curbs unethical decision making at the individual level. The findings of a study employing about 200 participants and a cheating task reveal that both accurate ethical prototypes and moral awareness of the situation decreased unethical decisions, and moral attentiveness was found to be positively related to both of these constructs. In addition, having accurate ethical prototypes was found to be a partial mediator between perceptual moral attentiveness and less cheating, while moral awareness was found to be a partial mediator between reflective moral attentiveness and less cheating. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The slippery slope: how small ethical transgressions pave the way for larger future transgressions.

Many recent corporate scandals have been described as resulting from a slippery slope in which a series of small infractions gradually increased over time (e.g., McLean & Elkind, 2003). However, behavioral ethics research has rarely considered how unethical behavior unfolds over time. In this study, we draw on theories of self-regulation to examine whether individuals engage in a slippery slope of increasingly unethical behavior. First, we extend Bandura's (1991, 1999) social-cognitive theory by demonstrating how the mechanism of moral disengagement can reduce ethicality over a series of gradually increasing indiscretions. Second, we draw from recent research connecting regulatory focus theory and behavioral ethics (Gino & Margolis, 2011) to demonstrate that inducing a prevention focus moderates this mediated relationship by reducing one's propensity to slide down the slippery slope. We find support for the developed model across 4 multiround studies.

Creativity and Ethical Behavior in Organizations: An Empirical Investigation

Behavioral ethics research makes two competing predictions about dispositional creativity and the role it plays in unethical behavior in organizations. Some researchers view dispositional creativit...

The dark side of consecutive high performance goals: Linking goal setting, depletion, and unethical behavior

Over 40years of research on the effects of goal setting has demonstrated that high goals can increase performance by motivating people, directing their attention to a target, and increasing their persistence (Locke & Latham, 2002). However, recent research has introduced a dark side of goal setting by linking high performance goals to unethical behavior (e.g., Schweitzer, Ordóñez, & Douma, 2004). In this paper, we integrate self-regulatory resource theories with behavioral ethics research exploring the dark side of goal setting to suggest that the very mechanisms through which goals are theorized to increase performance can lead to unethical behavior by depleting self-regulatory resources across consecutive goal periods. Results of a laboratory experiment utilizing high, low, increasing, decreasing, and “do your best” goal structures across multiple rounds provide evidence that depletion mediates the relationship between goal structures and unethical behavior, and that this effect is moderated by the number of consecutive goals assigned.