Between me and we: The importance of self-profit versus social justifiability for ethical decision making

Sina A. Klein, Isabel Thielmann, Benjamin E. Hilbig and Ingo Zettler

Judgment and Decision Making, 2017, vol. 12, issue 6, 563-571

Abstract: Current theories of dishonest behavior suggest that both individual profits and the availability of justifications drive cheating. Although some evidence hints that cheating behavior is most prevalent when both self-profit and social justifications are present, the relative impact of each of these factors is insufficiently understood. This study provides a fine-grained analysis of the trade-off between self-profit versus social justifiability. In a non-student online sample, we assessed dishonest behavior in a coin-tossing task, involving six conditions which systematically varied both self-profit and social justifiability (in terms of social welfare), such that a decrease in the former was associated with the exact same increase in the latter. Results showed that self-profit outweighed social justifiability, but that there was also an effect of social justifications.

Date: 2017
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