More from these Authors

• Working Paper | 2019

  Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning toward the Greater Good

  Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman

  Citation:

  Greene, Joshua D., Karen Huang, and Max Bazerman. "Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning toward the Greater Good." Working Paper, 2019.  View Details

  CiteView Details

  Related

• Working Paper | 2019

  Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good

  Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman

  The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was originally applied by philosophers and economists to foundational questions concerning the overall organization of society. Here we apply veil-of-ignorance reasoning in a more focused way to specific moral dilemmas, all of which involve a tension between the greater good and competing moral concerns. Across six experiments (N = 5,785), three pre-registered, we find that veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good. Participants first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning about a specific dilemma, asking themselves what they would want if they did not know who among those affected they would be. Participants then responded to a more conventional version of the same dilemma with a moral judgment, a policy preference, or an economic choice. Participants who first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning subsequently made more utilitarian choices in response to a classic philosophical dilemma, a medical dilemma, a real donation decision between a more vs. less effective charity, and a policy decision concerning the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. These effects depend on the impartial thinking induced by veil-of-ignorance reasoning and cannot be explained by a simple anchoring account, probabilistic reasoning, or generic perspective-taking. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be a useful tool for decision-makers who wish to make more impartial and/or socially beneficial choices.

  Keywords: policy-making; procedural justice; Ethics; Decision Making; Fairness;

  Citation:

  Huang, Karen, Joshua D. Greene, and Max Bazerman. "Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good." Working Paper, July 2019.  View Details

  CiteView Details Read Now

  Related

• Article | Academy of Management Perspectives | February 2019

  Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior

  McKenzie Rees, Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max Bazerman

  The business scandals in the past several decades led to the rising importance of ethics as a topic central to management scholarship. Behavioral scientists in particular were attracted to the topic in far greater numbers, and the study of ethical decision-making emerged as a core subfield (Messick & Tenbrunsel, 1996). This paper draws on that framework and applies it to negotiations, arguing that not all unethical behavior is intentional; rather, negotiators fall prey to bounded ethicality, engaging in behavior that is contradictory to their values without realizing they are doing so. We further argue that ethical fading—when individuals do not “see” the ethical implications of the situation or their action—is central to explaining why this occurs. Relying on past empirical research, we identify negotiation “cues” that have been linked to unethical behavior and explore how they make a negotiator particularly vulnerable to ethical fading, resulting in subsequent unethical behavior. We discuss several opportunities for future research in the negotiation discipline and other disciplines that draw on motivated social exchange or assume intentionality and conclude with a call for scholars to define normative standards as they pertain to negotiator ethics.

  Keywords: Ethics; Behavior; Negotiation; Situation or Environment; Perception;

  Citation:

  Rees, McKenzie, Ann E. Tenbrunsel, and Max Bazerman. "Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior." Academy of Management Perspectives 33, no. 1 (February 2019): 1–17.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsFind at HarvardPurchase

  Related