Responses to Ethical Scenarios: The Impact of Trade-Off Salience on Competing Construal Level Effects

Nelson Borges Amaral () and Jinfeng Jiao ()
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Nelson Borges Amaral: Ontario Tech University
Jinfeng Jiao: Binghamton University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 183, issue 3, No 6, 745-762

Abstract: Abstract This research investigates the importance of trade-off salience in understanding how variations in consumers’ construal levels can influence moral judgments. Across five experiments, trade-offs are implied and explicitly made salient, and construal levels are manipulated by altering temporal distance and perceptual fluency, and by using a well-established cognitive method. Consistent with prior research, we demonstrate that higher construal levels can reduce anticipated unethical behavior, when trade-offs are not salient, by making higher-level moral values more prominent. When trade-offs are salient, however, we reveal that unethical behavior is increased when construal levels are elevated by making desirability-related thoughts relatively more prominent, compared to feasibility-related thoughts. Tests of mediation provide support for the role of desirability- and feasibility-related thoughts. Together, our results provide insight into the opposing predictions made by construal level theory for ethical decision making by revealing how trade-off salience, often inherent in ethical dilemmas, systematically influences the effects of construal level on ethical decision making.

Keywords: Ethical scenarios; Trade-offs; Construal level; Moral judgments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04995-x

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