While prior research suggests a link between mindfulness and ethical decision-making, most of the evidence for this link is correlational and refers to self-focused ethical behaviors. The paucity of experimental evidence, coupled with a lack of clarity on what mechanisms underlie the effect, limits our understanding of whether and how mindfulness might foster other-focused ethical behaviors. In this research, we hypothesize that state mindfulness might promote other-focused ethical behaviors by increasing resourcefulness, which we define as a perceived state of resource (...) abundance. Across four experimental studies, we report causal evidence for the effects of state mindfulness instantiated through brief mindful meditation exercises on other-focused ethical behaviors, including choice of fair-trade products, charitable giving, and volunteering. Resourcefulness mediates the effects of mindfulness on other-focused ethical behaviors. Our work answers the call for more experimental research on mindfulness and its important implications for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

ABSTRACT To date, over forty-seven studies have examined the antecedents and outcomes of Moral Disengagement mechanisms used to rationalize unethical behavior. However, none have examined its relationship with mindful awareness, either as a trait or set of everyday applications. Our study demonstrates that trait mindfulness is negatively correlated with all MD mechanisms. The tendency to apply decentering and relaxation is positively correlated with all MD mechanisms while stopping and reappraisal trend toward positive relationships and savoring shows no correlation. We discuss (...) potential reasons for these disparate relationships and implications for mindfulness-based interventions in the workplace. (shrink)

The paper is one of the first empirical attempts that builds on the moral dilemmas and group rationality literature to explore the way in which group composition with respect to group members’ individual choices in moral dilemmas and social influence processes impact on group moral choices. First individually and then, in small groups, 221 participants were asked to decide on 10 moral dilemmas. Our results show that emergent group level utilitarianism is higher than the average individual utilitarianism, yet, lower than (...) the highest individual utilitarianism within groups. We also show that average individual utilitarianism positively predicts group utilitarianism while group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism has a negative effect on group utilitarianism. Next to group composition, minority influence processes explain additional variance in group utilitarianism, cognitive dissent having a positive influence, while normative deviance a negative influence on group utilitarianism. Majority influence has no significant influence on group utilitarianism. Finally, our results show that the relationship between group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism and emergent group utilitarianism is mediated by the two forms of minority influence. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and performance has previously been addressed in the literature, although there are still some gaps, for example, the relationship of ethical ideologies to student performance. This work aims to contribute to the literature with a statistical evaluation using partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM) regarding whether university students’ ethical ideologies and moral meaningfulness influence their level of student performance and academic achievement. Results indicate that the ideologies of justice and deontology increase moral meaningfulness, moral meaningfulness in (...) turn increase student’s citizenship behaviours and student’s in-role performance, and finally, student’s in-role performance positively influences academic achievement. This research provides resources applicable to the fields of pedagogy and ethics to encourage performance during the study and highlight the value of the ideologies of justice and deontology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims to provide a comprehensive insight into the role of mindfulness in organizational settings. A daily experience sampling method was used to explore the mechanism through which state mindfulness influences employees’ work attentiveness. By collecting data from 153 full-time Chinese employees over 5 consecutive days, we used 765 matched cases to conduct a multilevel structural equation model with random slopes to test the conceptual model. The results showed that: 1) daily state mindfulness is positively related to employee (...) work attentiveness; 2) employee moral self-efficacy mediates the indirect relationship between daily state mindfulness and work attentiveness; and 3) moral disengagement moderates the indirect relationship between state mindfulness and work attentiveness through moral self-efficacy, such that the indirect relationship will be weaker in the condition of low moral disengagement than in the condition of high moral disengagement. This research contributes to the work attentiveness literature by incorporating state mindfulness as a critical antecedent. (shrink)

Drawing from existing theory and empirical evidence on mindfulness, we posit that trait mindfulness is associated with less accurate memories of immoral conduct. We report three studies that provide evidence of this argument. One significant implication of this finding is that it provides a more balanced and complete view of mindfulness. Specifically, while mindfulness is widely promoted for its positive effects for employee well‐being, mindfulness may inadvertently promote a biased moral self‐perception based on inaccurate memories of one's past immoral conduct. (...) In a fourth study, we explore this implication and demonstrate that memory mediates the negative relationship between trait mindfulness and self‐reported immoral conduct. This research contributes to literatures on mindfulness, memory, morality, and to the growing body of work assessing the importance of mindfulness. (shrink)