Mad and misleading: Incidental anger promotes deception
Jeremy A. Yip and
Maurice E. Schweitzer
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016, vol. 137, issue C, 207-217
Abstract:
Emotions influence ethical behavior. Across four studies, we demonstrate that incidental anger, anger triggered by an unrelated situation, promotes the use of deception. In Study 1, participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to deceive their counterpart than those who felt neutral emotion. In Study 2, we demonstrate that empathy mediates the relationship between anger and deception. In Study 3, we contrast anger with another negative-valence emotion, sadness. We find that participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to use deception than were participants who felt incidental sadness or neutral emotion. In Study 4, we show that incentives moderate the relationship between anger and deception. Collectively, our work reveals that incidental anger promotes unethical behavior because angry people become less empathetic when pursuing their self-interest.
Keywords: Lying; Emotion; Anger; Empathy; Negotiation; Conflict; Self-interest; Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597816306239
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
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:eee:jobhdp:v:137:y:2016:i:c:p:207-217
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.09.006
Access Statistics for this article
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck
More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().