Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: The interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality.

Abstract

This article proposes and tests a social-cognitive framework for examining the joint influence of situational factors and the centrality of moral identity on moral intentions and behaviors. The authors hypothesized that if a situational factor increases the current accessibility of moral identity within the working self-concept, then it strengthens the motivation to act morally. In contrast, if a situational factor decreases the current accessibility of moral identity, then it weakens the motivation to act morally. The authors also expected the influence of situational factors to vary depending on the extent to which moral identity was central to a person's overall self-conception. Hypotheses derived from the framework were tested in 4 studies. The studies used recalling and reading a list of the Ten Commandments (Study 1), writing a story using morally laden terms (Study 4), and the presence of performance-based financial incentives (Studies 2 and 3) as situational factors. Participants' willingness to initiate a cause-related marketing program (Study 1), lie to a job candidate during a salary negotiation (Studies 2 and 3), and contribute to a public good (Study 4) were examined. Results provide strong support for the proposed framework.

A social-cognitive approach to understanding gender differences in negotiator ethics: The role of moral identity

“…Within negotiations, relationship-promoting and self-promoting outcomes are often inversely correlated (Curhan, Neale, Ross, & Rosencranz-Engelmann, 2008). Further supporting these ideas, Aquino et al (2009) showed that providing a performance-based financial incentive increased the use of deception in a negotiation for those with strong (but not weak) moral iden-tities by temporarily decreasing the salience of moral identity relative to other identities.…”

“…The negotiation lasted 15 min. Consistent with Aquino et al (2009), we included only those who held the role of manager (n = 112, 66 women) in our analyses in order to explore their deceptive behavior.…”

“…If financial incentives affect women (but not men), it would suggest that moral identity underlies gender differences in unethical negotiating behavior. Consistent with Aquino et al (2009), we operationalized financial incentives in two ways -the presence of performance-based incentives and incentive size. Following their logic, we expected financial incentives (performance-based incentives or large financial incentives) to affect women's but not men's unethical negotiating behavior.…”

“…Whereas stronger moral identities predict less unethical behavior than weaker moral identities, the presence of situational cues can mitigate this effect, with those having stronger moral identities reacting more to situational cues because the recency and presumed continual reinforcement of the situational cue ''overrides" the moral identity (e.g., Aquino, Freeman, Reed, Lim, & Felps, 2009). Building on this prior work, we examined a situational moderator by testing whether financial incentives, which increase the desire for money (Hur & Nordgren, 2016), would mitigate the gender difference in negotiator ethics.…”

“…People hold multiple identities and the salience of a given identity depends on both individual differences and situational cues (Aquino et al, 2009;Carver & Scheier, 1998;Higgins & Brendl, 1995;Markus & Kunda, 1986;Skitka, 2003). Because moral goals and values conflict with goals related to self-interest and selfadvancement (Grouzet et al, 2005;Schwartz, 1992), situational cues that highlight self-interest can supplant moral identity and increase unethical behavior.…”