Do liberals’ and conservatives’ brain processes differ in moral reasoning? This research explains these groups’ dissimilar moral stances when they face ethical transgressions in business. Research that explores the effects of ideological asymmetry on moral reasoning processes through moral foundations has been limited. We hypothesize two different moral reasoning processes and test them in the South Korean culture. Study 1 uses the neuroscientific method of event-related potentials to explore the dissociable neural mechanisms that underlie Korean liberals’ and conservatives’ moral reasoning (...) processes in business ethical transgressions. Liberals’ early frontal negative-going brain waves showed that they are quick to pass negative judgment by intuitively detecting violations of fairness, while conservatives’ temporoparietal positive-going brain waves showed that they have a higher motivation to respect authority. Both liberals’ and conservatives’ ERP components occur within the first second of the decision-making phase, suggesting the rapid and intuitive nature of moral reasoning processes. Study 2 tests a mediating process and confirms that Korean liberals exhibit the moral engagement strategy, through the fairness foundation. These findings from our interdisciplinary research deepen the knowledge of the complexity of human morality in business ethics research. (shrink)

Food has become a prominent object of everyday moral discussions. This study examines how gender, political orientation, and country of origin are connected to moral foundation endorsement in food-related moral thinking. Respondents were university students (N = 371) from Finland, Denmark, and Italy who completed a word association task, in that given stimulus words were “ethical food” and “unethical food.” Results showed a presence of five moral foundations in the data, and indicated high prevalence of the Purity/Sanctity foundation in food-related (...) moral thinking. As expected, gender differences emerged in the endorsement of the Fairness/Reciprocity and the Purity/Sanctity foundations. Also, between-country differences emerged in four of the five moral foundations, indicating that even within Europe countries may differ from each other in their endorsement of foundations. The results also verified the previously found effect of political orientation in three of the five moral foundations, although the study used a completely new and different type of method compared with previous studies. The study concludes by proposing more cross-national comparative studies where the focus is on the specific objects of moral thinking. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present Bioethics, particularly its educational aspect, as a way to promote moral and democratic competencies, thus improving a personal capacity to face not only bioethical issues but also broader ethical, moral and even political problems. We believe that we should invest educative efforts on the affective and cognitive aspects of moral behavior if we want to promote the capacity to make moral judgments and act according to them. In pluralistic democratic societies, it is (...) necessary to also promote the capacity to speak up and listen to arguments as a means to deal with moral problems. Any Bioethics which does not also include an educational action is prone to lose most of its significance. We propose that Bioethics should be led to an educational turn, focusing on the construction of an educative toolbox composed of interventional and evaluative instruments. (shrink)

AbstractWhat explains followers’ attraction to tyrannical leaders? They systematically coerce, belittle, and manipulate, often at the expense of subordinates’ mental and physical well-being and their organization’s long-term interests. To help address the question, we examine the tendencies of people who view the tyrannical leader prototype (characterized by domineering, pushy, manipulative, loud, conceited, and selfish traits) as a component of effective leadership (Epitropaki and Martin in J Appl Psychol 89:293–310, 2004; Foti et al. in Leadersh Q 23:702–717, 2012). Specifically, we apply (...) moral and evolutionary psychology to propose and empirically test a mediation model in which belief in a dangerous world (Altemeyer in Enemies of freedom: understanding right-wing authoritarianism. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1988) links positively with endorsement of the tyrannical leader traits, as mediated through the binding components (loyalty, authority, and sanctity) of moral foundations theory (Graham et al. J Pers Soc Psychol 101:366–385, 2011). Regarding gender, our model proposes that the link between the binding foundations and tyrannical leadership endorsement is stronger among males than females. Our overall model was supported across two independent samples of working adults; we also anticipated and found a direct negative association between the individualizing moral foundations (care and harm) and endorsement of the tyrannical prototype. These findings provide insights into the circumstances under which tyrannical traits are viewed as part of effective leadership. (shrink)

To advance current knowledge on ethical decision-making in organizations, we integrate two perspectives that have thus far developed independently: the organizational identification perspective and the ethical climate perspective. We illustrate the interaction between these perspectives in two studies, in which we presented participants with moral business dilemmas. Specifically, we found that organizational identification increased moral decision-making only when the organization’s climate was perceived to be ethical. In addition, we disentangle this effect in Study 2 from participants’ moral identity. We argue (...) that the interactive influence of organizational identification and ethical climate, rather than the independent influence of either of these perspectives, is crucial for understanding moral decision-making in organizations. (shrink)