What makes a person feel justified in taking advantage over another? Psychological scientist Gert Cornelissen of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and colleagues found that people who have an “ends justify the means” mindset are more likely to balance their good and bad deeds, while those who believe that what is right and wrong is a matter of principle are more likely to be consistent in their behavior, even if that behavior is bad.
Previous research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that providing a sense of power to someone instills a black-and-white sense of right and wrong (especially wrong). Once armed with this moral clarity, powerful people then perceive wrongdoing with much less ambiguity than people lacking this power, and punish apparent wrong-doers with more severity than people without power would.
Existing research is mixed when it comes to explaining how previous behavior affects our current moral conduct.
Some researchers find evidence for moral balancing, suggesting that we hover around a moral setpoint. Going over that setpoint by doing a good deed gives us license to engage in more self-interested, immoral, or antisocial behavior. When our moral self-image falls below that setpoint, however, we feel ill at ease and try to compensate by engaging in positive behavior.
What decides whether you will sell out your personal values to the highest bidder? It can be reasonably suggested that there would be no corruption in the world if people refused to sacrifice their value systems for monetary compensation. So why does it happen?
[,,,]
The results from all three studies showed that participants’ dominant ethical mindset, in combination with their previous behavior, influenced their behavior in the lab.
When given a pot of money to divide, people with an outcome-based mindset allocated fewer coins to their partners after recalling recent ethical behavior. They were also more likely to cheat when given the opportunity to self-report the number of test items they answered correctly. These results suggest that they felt licensed to engage in “bad” behavior after thinking about their good deeds.
People who had a rule-based mindset, on the other hand, gave more coins to their partner and were less likely to cheat after recalling an ethical act, indicating that they were trying to be consistent with their previous behavior.
The relationship seems to be driven, at least in part, by the fact that people with an outcome-based mindset are attending to their moral self-image, or the discrepancy between the self they perceive and the self they aspire to be.
Why Do People Commit To Behavior Which Consistently Lacks Moral or Ethical Principles | MyScienceAcademy
No comments:
Post a Comment