We present a cross-sectional study of ethical decision-making correlated with spirituality and utilizing moral intensity as a moderator for workers in the Southeastern United States. This study presents spirituality as an individual variable and moral intensity as a situational variable along with ethical decision-making to examine the interaction of these factors in moral dilemmas. Utilizing previously validated instruments for ethical decision-making and individual spirituality, we find that workers with relatively high measured spirituality made less ethical decisions compared to workers with (...) relatively lower measures of spirituality. Further, we find that the introduction of high moral intensity as a situational variable does not moderate the observed correlation between spirituality and ethical decision-making. This research supports the conceptual nature of the Interactionist Theory by presenting in a single study both individual and situational variables in ethical decision-making. (shrink)

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action (...) to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision. (shrink)

Size perception of visual objects is highly context dependent. Here we report a novel perceptual size illusion that the self-face, being a unique and distinctive self-referential stimulus, can enlarge its perceived size. By using a size discrimination paradigm, we found that the self-face was perceived as significantly larger than the other-face of the same size. This size overestimation effect was not due to the familiarity of the self-face, since it could be still observed when the self-face was directly compared with (...) a famous face. More crucially, such illusion effect could be extended to a new cartoon face that was transiently associated with one's own face and could also exert further contextual influences on visual size perception of other objects. These findings together highlight the role of self-awareness in visual size perception and point to a special mechanism of size perception tuned to self-referential information. (shrink)

In a corporate apology, the apologizer can be either a male or a female. How does the gender of the apologizer influence consumer forgiveness? We suggest that the relative effectiveness of corporate apologies made by males versus females depends on the nature of the corporate wrongdoing, namely whether the wrongdoing is related to performance or to value. Three experiments demonstrate that a male apologizer elicits more consumer forgiveness than a female apologizer for performance-related wrongdoings, while a female apologizer garners more (...) forgiveness than a male apologizer for values-related wrongdoings. These effects are driven by consumers’ social perceptions of the different genders. Specifically, a female apologizer is perceived as warmer which offsets the perceived lack of warmth resulting from values-related corporate transgressions, while a male apologizer is perceived as more competent which compensates for the perceived lack of competence resulting from performance-related corporate transgressions. However, this effect is attenuated when consumers are the same gender as the apologizer, and can be reversed when the apologizer is personally responsible for the wrongdoing. These findings offer novel insights on corporate apologies, gender-trait associations, and gender and forgiveness, while suggesting that companies must carefully consider the gender of the spokesperson in the wake of transgressions. (shrink)

Research has shown that negotiators sometimes misrepresent their emotions, and communicate a different emotion to opponents than they actually experience. Less is known about how people evaluate such negotiation tactics. Building on person perception literature, we investigated in three preregistered studies (N = 853) how participants evaluate negotiators who deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicate anger or happiness, on the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Study 1 employed a buyer/seller setting, Studies 2 and 3 employed an Ultimatum Bargaining Game (UBG). In (...) all studies, participants learned a negotiator’s (the target’s) experienced and communicated emotions (anger or happiness), before evaluating the target. Across studies, targets were evaluated lower on morality if they deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicated anger or happiness. Notably, negotiators deceptively communicating anger were evaluated lower on morality and sociability but higher on competence than those deceptively communicating happiness. Studies 2 and 3 investigated behavioral consequences by examining whether in a future negotiation participants chose the target to be their opponent or representative. Results showed that for opponents, participants preferred targets who genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), which was associated with their perceived morality or sociability. For representatives, participants not only preferred targets who had genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), but also targets who had deceptively communicated anger (vs. happiness), which was associated with their perceived competence. These findings show that when evaluating deceptive (vs. genuine) communication strategies, people distinguish between morality, sociability, and competence. The importance they attach to these dimensions is also contingent on the behavioral decisions they face. (shrink)

Despite efforts to address societal ills, social enterprises face challenges in increasing their impact. Drawing from the RBV, we argue that a social enterprise’s scale of social impact depends on its capabilities to engage stakeholders, attract government support, and generate earned-income. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 171 US-based social enterprises and find support for the hypothesized relationships between these organizational capabilities and scale of social impact. Further, we find that these relationships are contingent upon stewardship culture. Specifically, (...) we show that an entrepreneur-centered stewardship culture increases the effects of the capabilities to attract government support and to generate earned-income, while an employee-centered stewardship culture compensates for low abilities to attract government support and to generate earned-income. (shrink)

Employee engagement and spirituality have both been the focus of increasing interest by researchers and practitioners, and both are still early stage theories with ill-defined constructs and definitions. Emergent empirical work related to engagement and spirituality has supported the promise of improving both organizational performance and employee conditions. Responding to the call by theorists to examine engagement antecedents and specifically, the relationship between spirituality and employee engagement, a cross-sectional study was performed to examine self-reported individual spirituality as measured by the (...) DSES and employee engagement measured using the UWES-9 including the dimensions of vigor, dedication, and absorption. 124 usable surveys were collected from a snowballing convenience sample and after confirming demographic representativeness and identifying the individual’s organizational role as a potential influential variable, analyses of the relationships between individual spirituality, overall engagement, and three individual engagement dimensions were performed using multiple regression controlling for organizational role. Empirical support was found for relationships between individual spirituality and engagement, vigor, and dedication but not for the engagement dimension of absorption. The findings should encourage further future exploration of the relationship between spirituality and engagement and inquiry into why results differ across engagement’s dimensions; specifically, why the relationship was not supported for absorption. The empirical support for spirituality as a predictor of engagement informs practical decisions for addressing workplace spirituality and concerns with the potential to assist in countering the declining engagement trend. (shrink)

Several studies have illuminated how processing manual action verbs (MaVs) affects the programming or execution of concurrent hand movements. Here, to circumvent key confounds in extant designs, we conducted the first assessment of motor–language integration during handwriting—a task in which linguistic and motoric processes are co‐substantiated. Participants copied MaVs, non‐manual action verbs, and non‐action verbs as we collected measures of motor programming and motor execution. Programming latencies were similar across conditions, but execution was faster for MaVs than for the other (...) categories, regardless of whether word meanings were accessed implicitly or explicitly. In line with the Hand‐Action‐Network Dynamic Language Embodiment (HANDLE) model, such findings suggest that effector‐congruent verbs can prime manual movements even during highly automatized tasks in which motoric and verbal processes are naturally intertwined. Our paradigm opens new avenues for fine‐grained explorations of embodied language processes. (shrink)

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we contribute to the behavioral ethics literature by examining how and why organizational socialization processes can affect newcomers’ adoption of unethical behaviors. Specifically, we contend that quality peer coaching provides newcomers with enhanced self-resources that diminishes emotional exhaustion and thus indirectly reduces newcomer unethical conduct. Conversely, peer coach unethical conduct increases newcomers’ emotional exhaustion, and thus indirectly increases newcomers’ own unethical acts. Our research also identifies newcomers’ goal orientations as important individual differences that moderate (...) the proposed mediation effects. Newcomers with high mastery orientations respond to high emotional exhaustion by harnessing more resources and identifying new work strategies, thereby engaging in less unethical conduct. Conversely, newcomers with high performance orientations give into emotional exhaustion and engage in unethical conduct as a way of outperforming others while conserving resources. We tested our theoretical model using a sample of peer coaches and newcomers from the Real Estate industry, using objective reporting of peer coaches’ and newcomers’ unethical conduct over a nine-month period. (shrink)

Prior studies have shown that powerful individuals are more unethical than powerless individuals. In real life, power is unstable, and multiple social interactions may cause loss of power. However, extant research has assumed the power structure to be stable and thus overlooked the potential interaction of power and stability in affecting unethicality. Using the approach-inhibition theory of power, we predicted that stability of power moderates power’s effect on unethical behavior. Results from four studies revealed that powerful individuals showed more unethical (...) behavior than powerless individuals only when power was stable, but not when it was unstable. The higher level of unethical behavior under the condition of stable power was explained by attitude toward risk. Our results highlight that the link between power and unethicality is broken when power is unstable. Powerful individuals are no more unethical than powerless individuals when they face a greater possibility of losing their power. (shrink)

It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male. Evidence to test these hypotheses, however, is inconclusive due to the difficulties of obtaining unbiased data. Here we report a pre-registered test of these four hypotheses, conducted on papers that were (...) identified in a previous study as containing problematic image duplications through a systematic screening of the journal PLoS ONE. Image duplications were classified into three categories based on their complexity, with category 1 being most likely to reflect unintentional error and category 3 being most likely to reflect intentional fabrication. We tested multiple parameters connected to the hypotheses above with a matched-control paradigm, by collecting two controls for each paper containing duplications. Category 1 duplications were mostly not associated with any of the parameters tested, as was predicted based on the assumption that these duplications were mostly not due to misconduct. Categories 2 and 3, however, exhibited numerous statistically significant associations. Results of univariable and multivariable analyses support the hypotheses that academic culture, peer control, cash-based publication incentives and national misconduct policies might affect scientific integrity. No clear support was found for the “pressures to publish” hypothesis. Female authors were found to be equally likely to publish duplicated images compared to males. Country-level parameters generally exhibited stronger effects than individual-level parameters, because developing countries were significantly more likely to produce problematic image duplications. This suggests that promoting good research practices in all countries should be a priority for the international research integrity agenda. (shrink)