Bound Ethical Behavior

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Bounded ethicality is unethical behavior that occurs outside of our conscious awareness. There are seven forms of bounded ethicality that we will discuss: In-group favoritism, or the tendency to favor in-group members over out-group members. Implicit attitudes, or unconscious attitudes that we hold about others. Indirectly unethical behavior, or behavior that harms others indirectly. Values that we consider to be sacred. Conflicts of interest that impact our behavior despite our best efforts to not be biased. One thing that we commonly do is overclaim the amount of credit that we deserve on a task performed with others. This is often reflected in adding estimates of the percentage of tasks that people say they are responsible for. Often, these …show more content…

In joint ventures, each party is reluctant to contribute its best resources into a project unless they are sure that the other party will also be fully invested. Combined with the tendency to overclaim credit, each party often feels justified in reducing its contribution to the joint venture, which breeds a mutual perception that the other party is unfair. One way to reduce (but not eliminate) the tendency to overclaim credit is to directly ask people to consider both their own contributions and the contributions of others. A vast line of literature exists suggesting that we tend to perform favors for similar others. This tendency to help out people who are like us seems communal and harmless, but it has the unintended consequence of indirect discrimination. People are less likely to associate positive characteristics with out-group members than with in-group members. People are less likely to punish unfair behavior when it is directed at demographically different others than they are for demographically different others. This tendency to indirectly discriminate against out-group members in favor of in-group members has important …show more content…

Evidence is starting to arise that our need to uphold moral values is unconscious and rationalized in a post-hoc fashion. A long line of evidence suggests that conflict of interest between our self-interest and the interest of others leads to biased decision-making despite the best intentions of people not to be biased by their self-interest. One proposed solution to resolving conflicts of interest is to disclose these conflicts. However, research actually suggests that this may not be an effective strategy since the evidence suggests that people actually behave more unethically after disclosing a conflict of interest. In addition to being susceptible to bias resulting from conflicts of interest, we are also prone to being biased by motivated blindness, or a failure to notice information that challenges our self-interest. Some people who regularly face this issue: Because motivated reasoning and motivated blindness are largely unconscious, it is difficult to address these

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