A new study has revealed the true extent to which a phenomenon called “moral licensing<\/strong>” can transform how employees self-govern their actions over a course of time.<\/p>\n The research shows they leverage feelings of virtuousness from having resisted a large temptation to act selfishly on a different occasion<\/strong>. The findings have important implications for how companies deal with corporate misconduct and unethical actions.<\/p>\n The study, co-authored by experts from the University of Exeter and the London School of Economics, suggest that traditional methods employed by organisations to deter unethical behaviour may not be sufficient<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Instead, researchers speculate, in light of their findings, that it may be more effective to remove any substantial temptations for staff to cheat<\/strong>, and pay closer attention to how decision-making processes are structured when it comes to high-stakes decisions.<\/p>\n Zoe Rahwan, who led the research while at the London School of Economics, said: “We found that when people do behave honourably amid an opportunity to significantly enrich themselves through unethical means, they then become more self-serving and less cooperative immediately after.”<\/p>\n Dr Oliver Hauser, from the University of Exeter Business School, who was part of the research team, said: “Senior staff in organisations are by definition most commonly exposed to high-stakes decisions with associated personal gains and therefore are perhaps the most vulnerable to “moral licensing.”<\/p>\n “To avoid the feelings of moral virtuousness that may stem from resisting a personal gain from a high-stakes decision turning into less cooperative behaviour subsequently, organisations may wish to consider assigning responsibility for multiple high-stakes decisions to different decision-makers or reviewing the timing between such decisions.”<\/p>\n For the research, the experts asked 2,015 participants to play 10 rounds of a coin-flipping task, where they could earn money by reporting that the outcome of a coin toss matched their prediction. This provided an opportunity to lie in a manner which nobody else could verify. The responses were then measured against the statistically most likely set of results for correct guesses.<\/p>\n The researchers later told the participants that they could also donate any of their winnings from the coin-flipping task to one of five charities.<\/p>\n People’s self-perception of their morality was measured immediately after the coin-flipping task, and a day later.<\/p>\n The researchers first examined how the size of temptation affected cheating behaviour. They varied the rewards by 500 times with rewards ranging from a maximum 10 US cents (~8 pence) to 50 US dollars (~40 pounds) — a much higher reward, and ultimately temptation, than is commonly used in such experiments.<\/p>\n Consistent with past research, they found that the reward size had a negligible effect on unethical decision-making — in the first instance. However those who cheated the least when tempted with high stakes were more likely to license themselves not to behave so charitably in another task.<\/p>\n Many of the most ‘dishonest’ participants felt more guilty than other groups about their behaviour immediately after the task and were the only group to feel even worse a day later. This suggests people under-estimate the psychological costs of unethical behaviour<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Dr Barbara Fasolo, Associate Professor at the London School of Economics and a member of the research team, said of the findings: “Our research complements a growing experimental literature that shows that the size of the payoff is not a key driver of immediate unethical behaviour<\/strong> and many people engage in low-level cheating.<\/p>\n “However, we also demonstrate that there are costs to resisting great personal temptations in the form of subsequent non-cooperative behaviour, and that the few people who engage in maximal cheating underestimate the toll it takes on how they perceive their own morality their moral self-perception..”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Exeter press release: The age old adage of virtue being its own reward may not hold true in the corporate world — in fact, honourable acts… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[526],"tags":[20,75,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27574"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27720,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27574\/revisions\/27720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Decisionmaking-2-300x200.jpg\")
The age old adage of virtue being its own reward may not hold true in the corporate world — in fact, honourable acts could lead workers to behave more selfishly later on<\/strong>, new research has shown.<\/p>\n