The Character Lens: A Person-Centered Perspective on Moral Recognition and Ethical Decision-Making

Honesty Among Lawyers: Moral Character, Game Framing, and Honest Disclosures in Negotiations

“…In the current study, we examined lawyers' personality characteristics that are indicative of their moral character-honesty-humility (Lee and Ashton 2012), moral identity internalization (Aquino and Reed 2002), and guilt proneness (Cohen, Panter, and Turan 2012)-which we assessed using standard measures from the psychology literature (Cohen et al 2014b;Helzer, Cohen, and Kim 2022). Our results are consistent with the possibility that lawyers' choices about whether to disclose honest information to correct misimpressions by opposing counsel are guided by their moral character, as well as their cognitive framing of negotiation-specifically their game framing of negotiation.…”

“…Relative to their peers, those with higher scores on this measure of moral character indicate that they are committed to fairness, sincerity, and modesty, and resistant to greed (i.e., higher in honesty-humility), that they strive to be moral in their everyday thoughts and actions (i.e., higher in moral identity), and that they have a strong conscience and heightened sense of responsibility to others (i.e., higher in guilt proneness). Prior empirical work by Helzer, Cohen, and Kim (2022) found that individuals with higher scores on these three moral character measures (i.e., honestyhumility, moral identity, and guilt proneness) had greater moral recognition in decisions they faced and made more trustworthy decisions in interpersonal interactions with peers.…”

“…Negotiators with lower levels of moral character are more willing than those with higher levels to use morally questionable tactics, which has downstream implications for their reputations and relationships (Volkema and Rivers 2012;Cohen et al 2014b;Cohen 2017, in press;Morse and Cohen 2019). Helzer, Cohen, and Kim (2022) introduced the term "the character lens" to capture the idea that moral character shapes the way people view and make sense of the world. Individuals higher (versus lower) in moral character tend to be more attuned to moral issues in the situations they face (i.e., they have greater moral awareness) and are more likely than those lower in moral character to view decisions through an ethical framework.…”

“…Under the influence of other frames (e.g., a business frame or a legal frame), however, decision makers are not morally aware." Recent work on moral character has shown that those with higher levels of moral character are more likely than those with lower levels to apply an ethical frame to their decisions (Helzer, Cohen, and Kim 2022). That is, individuals with higher levels of moral character tend to have greater moral recognition in their daily life, and this helps to explain why such individuals act in more moral and ethical ways.…”

“…Last, participants completed three personality scales that provide insight into their moral character: The Brief HEXACO Inventory, which contains four items that measure the broad moral character trait of "honesty-humility" (DeVries 2013); the five-item Moral Identity Internalization scale (Aquino and Reed 2002); and the five-item Guilt Proneness scale (Cohen et al 2014a). Prior research in psychology and business ethics has established that these three scales provide reliable and valid information about respondents' moral character and are complementary to one another (Cohen et al 2014b;Helzer, Cohen, and Kim 2022). The fourteen items from the three scales were each standardized to have a mean score of 0 and standard deviation of 1, and then these items were averaged to form a composite indicator of lawyers' moral character.…”