HAMILTON – Everyone acts unethically now and then, but few people consider themselves to be lacking in moral integrity. How is this possible’ What are people telling themselves just before committing an undesirable act that enables them to freely behave in a way that contradicts their ethical values and yet not feel guilty nor morally weak’ David Bersoff, Ph.D., director of the Diogenes Project (a non-profit research group examining the psychological underpinnings of immoral behavior) is currently engaging in research designed to answer this question. His most recent findings appear in the January 1999 issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, which is currently being published at 51·çÁ÷.
Dr. Bersoff’s theory is that people generally do not act unethically unless they can first concoct an excuse or a justification (commonly called a rationalization) for why it is okay for them to break the rules in the particular situation they are facing. These excuses or justifications also enable them to avoid feeling morally inadequate or remorseful despite having acted in a way most people would consider to be unacceptable. Certain situational factors can make it harder for people to concoct such rationalizations. The more prevalent these factors are in a given situation, the less likely it is that someone will act unethically.
In the study, Dr. Bersoff tested his theory in an experiment in which he overpaid people for performing a task, and then examined the conditions under which they were the most likely to point out the overpayment. With no situational factors designed to impede rationalizing present, 80 percent of the people behaved unethically and kept the extra money. But when combinations of situational factors designed to make it more difficult to justify to oneself keeping the extra money were introduced, the rate of unethical behavior was reduced to 17.5 percent. Specifically, the tendency to point out the overpayment was enhanced by 1) making participants feel more responsible for being overpaid, 2) drawing an explicit link between keeping the money and its harmful consequences to a specific individual, and 3) putting participants in the position of criticizing other people for using excuses similar to those that they might be tempted to use themselves for keeping the overpayment.
The effectiveness and nature of the manipulations used in this study to reduce unethical behavior should be of interest to business organizations. When employees are suspected of stealing or engaging in other unproductive behaviors, a common response is to increase random monitoring and searches. Such approaches, however, entail many thorny ethical, legal, and moral issues. In contrast, Dr. Bersoff’s study demonstrates that unethical behavior can be significantly reduced without using coercive methods.
In addition, Dr. Bersoff found that people’s stated beliefs regarding what is and is not unethical behavior were not related to whether they returned the money. This result has two implications. The first is that people who do bad things are not only those lacking a proper sense of right and wrong. The second is that measures of moral values and beliefs are not reliable predictors of actual behavior. In the end, an understanding of how situational factors influence moral decision-making proved to be far more important in predicting behavior. Improving this understanding may lead to the development of practical strategies for reducing the acts of theft, cheating and lying in which even ‘good’ people too often engage.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, currently under the editorship of John F. Dovidio, Charles A. Dana professor of psychology at 51·çÁ÷, is one of the flagship journals of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. ‘One of the objectives of the society, and therefore of the journal,’ says Dovidio, ‘is to increase public awareness of the relevance of social behavioral science to the lives and welfare of people in general.’
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