Following one’s true self and the sacredness of cultural values

Abstract

People seem to share a widespread lay belief that true selves are morally good entities. This lay belief has downstream consequences for a variety of domains such as person perception and perceived self-knowledge. The current work examines whether it also has consequences for moral decision-making. We hypothesized that people would make more moral decisions when they were focused on being authentic as opposed to being focused on other decision-making strategies. This hypothesis rests on the idea that if people believe their true selves are morally good, then attempts to follow that true self will make them less willing to behave immorally. Consistent with this hypothesis, three within-subject studies (total N = 573) found that participants reported they would need more money to violate a moral norm if they were focused on trying to be authentic relative to if they were focused on being rational, intuitive or realistic.

The Authentic Moral Self: Dynamic Interplay between Perceived Authenticity and Moral Behaviors in the Workplace

“…The link between moral behaviors and authenticity at work remained robust both across and within individuals, and both variables were associated with positive outcome variables such as meaning in work and job satisfaction (Study 3). Our findings added to a line of previous research demonstrating the bidirectional relationship between morality and feelings of authenticity (Christy, et at., 2016;Christy, Kim, Vess, Schlegel & Hicks, 2017;Gino, et al, 2015;Kim, et al, 2017) and extended the findings to workplace and non-Western cultures. As shown in previous research (English & Chen, 2007Slabu, et al, 2014), the core of authentic experiences could be remarkably similar-especially within the same context-across different cultures.…”

“…Our focus is the generalizability of this relationship in work-related contexts. Therefore, we did not examine or compare to non-work-related contexts where the relationship between moral behaviors and authenticity has been established (Christy et al, 2016;Kim, et al, 2017). We examined both sides of this potentially bidirectional relationship.…”

“…This lay belief has implications for both feelings of authenticity and moral behaviors. For instance, emerging evidence (Christy, Seto, Schlegel, Vess, & Hicks, 2016;Kim, Christy, Rivera, Schlegel, & Hicks, 2017) suggests a bidirectional causal relationship between moral behaviors and authenticity. That is, individuals feel less authentic to the extent they perceive their behaviors as deviating from being morally good (Christy et al, 2016).…”

“…That is, individuals feel less authentic to the extent they perceive their behaviors as deviating from being morally good (Christy et al, 2016). They are also less willing to engage in morally questionable behaviors when they are trying to be authentic (i.e., aiming to follow their true selves, Kim et al, 2017).…”

“…We conducted three studies (two experimental, and one using daily diary methods) to examine this question. Based on previous research (Christy et al, 2016;Kim, et al, 2017), we hypothesized that authenticity and moral behaviors should reinforce each other in work settings. As long as employees can behave in an authentic way, they would be more likely to behave morally, and vice versa.…”