Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It

C.  Moore; F.  Gino

Article | Research in Organizational Behavior | 2013

Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It

by C. Moore and F. Gino

Abstract

This chapter is about the social nature of morality. Using the metaphor of the moral compass to describe individuals' inner sense of right and wrong, we offer a framework to help us understand social reasons why our moral compass can come under others' control, leading even good people to cross ethical boundaries. Departing from prior work focusing on the role of individuals' cognitive limitations in explaining unethical behavior, we focus on the socio-psychological processes that function as triggers of moral neglect, moral justification and immoral action, and their impact on moral behavior. In addition, our framework discusses organizational factors that exacerbate the detrimental effects of each trigger. We conclude by discussing implications and recommendations for organizational scholars to take a more integrative approach to developing and evaluating theory about unethical behavior.

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Moral Sensibility; Behavior;

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Moore, C., and F. Gino. "Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It." Research in Organizational Behavior 33 (2013): 53–77.

Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control

D. A. Tian, J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton and F. Gino

Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in six experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual prior to a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures enacted were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline undergirded the facilitative effect of rituals on behavioral self-control. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts.

Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Health;

Citation:

Tian, D. A., J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton, and F. Gino. "Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 6 (June 2018): 851–876. View Details

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Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It

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