Unravel the intricate web of our moral compass as we delve into the psychological factors influencing our ethical choices. Discover how our minds shape our decisions, and how understanding this can lead to more conscious, ethical decision-making.
Psychological phenomenon called “regulatory fit”
We all have a preferred motivation style. When that aligns with how we’re approaching a specific goal, it can impact how ethical we are in sticky situations.
- Regulatory fit enhances the persuasiveness of an appeal, increases how much people enjoy tasks, and makes them more willing to spend money
- Experiencing fit also acts as an intensifier, making positive experiences feel especially good and negative ones especially bad
Regulatory Fit in the Real World
Most people are basically honest, and regulatory fit will help push them further in that direction
- Managers can observe whether their employees are more promotion- or prevention-focused and help them adopt strategies that match their style
- “Understanding where people are coming from and giving them instructions that fit their orientation is going to get them to do what they think is right thing”
Regulatory Fit and Moral Tendencies
To understand how regulatory fit might influence moral decision-making, the researchers first had to evoke the “just right” or “something’s off” feeling of regulatory fit or regulatory nonfit in study participants.
- In one study, researchers recruited 493 online participants, randomly assigned to either the promotion-focused group (and asked to write about their aspirations) or the prevention-focused, and had half of the group write about what they could proactively do to achieve their goals and half write about pitfalls to avoid in fulfilling their obligations
- After all this, participants were asked to imagine themselves in a tempting situation that involved cheating on a long-term partner by having unprotected sex with an attractive acquaintance, and to rate how likely they would be to have sex in this situation
- The researchers found an intriguing pattern: morally flexible participants (i.e., the high disengagers) were in general more likely to cheat on their partner than those with a flexible moral compass
Lying for Gain, Telling the Truth at a Cost
In the final experiment, Achar and Lee studied moral decision-making in action, using an experiment devised by Uri Gneezy that involves either lying for financial gain or taking a loss by telling the truth.
- After completing the regulatory-fit prompts from the previous study, participants were told they had been paired with another study participant, “Partner 2.” (In truth, there was no Partner 2.)
- Participants were then presented with two scenarios: in Option A, they would receive 25 cents and Partner 2 would receive 20 cents.
