Feelings on Greed are Predictor of Unethical Acts
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
About 25% of the queries I get for consulting work in cognitive design have to do with ethics. Employers large and small are worried about the lack of ethical behavior in the workplace. Ethics is an interesting area to work in because it pulls on everything from moral philosophy to cognitive science and behavior change. Business ethics has been the biggest boom of all time for the applied philosopher.
How to design and implement a successful workplace ethics program is an open issue. So I am always on the look out for new scientific research into moral cognition, ethical behaviors and value-based decision making. Found an interesting post on Futurity about research done at UC Berkley on the connection between your attitudes about greed and your propensity to cheat, lie and otherwise engage in unethical behavior. Specifically they:
“… consistently found that upper-class participants were more likely to lie and cheat when gambling or negotiating, cut people off when driving, and endorse unethical behavior in the workplace.”
However, upon further investigation they found it was not socio-economic status that was the primary driver of unethical behavior but participants’ attitudes and beliefs about greed. Participants that were primed to see the benefits of greed tended to act more unethically.
While this might not be too surprising, having scientific evidence for any predictive factor of unethical behaviors is critical to designing effective workplace ethics programs.
