Emotional Regulation Self-Efficacy Influences Moral Decision Making: A Non-Cooperative Game Study of the New Generation of Employees

Bo Liu (), Taishan Yang and Wei Xie
Additional contact information
Bo Liu: School of Economics and Management, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Taishan Yang: School of Economics and Management, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Wei Xie: School of Economics and Management, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 23, 1-12

Abstract: Scholars generally believe that personality characteristics and psychological factors influence individual moral decision-making. However, few have ever discussed specific psychological factors and characteristics having such influences. Based on the self-efficacy theory and the social identity theory, this paper has proposed, from the perspective of social cognition, that emotional regulation self-efficacy influences the moral decision-making of the new generation of employees and that the mediating effect of interpersonal trust and the regulating effect of communication also play a role in the decision-making process. This study has designed a “red-blue experiment” based on the complete static information model in the non-cooperative game theory so as to conduct an experimental and qualitative analysis for the new generation of employees and to explore the characteristics of psychological process, self-efficacy, and moral decision-making of the experimental population. Through analysis of the 138 data sources collected from the experiment, the results showed that emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making ( p < 0.01), emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on interpersonal trust (r = 0.560, p < 0.01), and interpersonal trust had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making (r = 0.290, p < 0.01). The mediating effect was 0.163. The interaction terms of emotional regulation self-efficacy and communication effect had a significant negative effect on interpersonal trust (r = −0.221, p < 0.01). All the hypotheses proposed in this study are supported by experimental data and reveal the psychological mechanism of moral decision-making in the new generation of employees. The study has further shown that the moral education of the new generation of employees needs to focus on improving emotional regulation self-efficacy and enhancing interpersonal trust, which provides theoretical support for the moral education methods and paths of the new generation of employees.

Keywords: new generation of employees; emotion management; communication effect; interpersonal trust; moral decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/16360/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/16360/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:23:p:16360-:d:995406

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().