How Implicit Assumptions Affect Ethical Behaviour

Philosophers have long theorized about the inner workings of moral decision-making.  With a few important exceptions, rational thought has taken a dominant position in this literature.  Recently however, scholars have drawn from findings on moral intuition and the burgeoning physiological and clinical research in the area to suggest that moral decision-making is also impacted -- if not dominated – by reflexive or automatic cognitive processes. 

As work in this area progresses, a major hurdle has emerged: despite strong arguments for the relationship between automatic processes and moral behaviour, there is no direct evidence of this relationship.  Furthermore, though many have acknowledged that organizations can play an important role in shaping automatically-driven behaviour, these discussions have been relatively abstract: to date, no research has shown how an organization can affect the relationship between an individual’s automatic cognitive processes and their behaviour. 

The literature on automatic cognition indicates that social judgments are rapidly constructed from past experience through a process that is truly automatic – i.e., without conscious deliberation.  Individuals have been shown to approach even the most novel social situations informed by their underlying experience, which is stored in ‘knowledge structures’—schematic mental models that describe relationships between concepts.  The term ‘implicit association’ refers to any association of this type.  Scholars have distinguished between different kinds of implicit associations, including implicit attitudes, implicit stereotypes and implicit self concept.

Though people rarely think about their implicit associations and the assumptions that result from them, in truth they represent the basic unit of understanding that produces our day-to-day behaviour.  It is important to note that implicit associations are distinct from explicit attitudes: explicit attitudes are beliefs and opinions developed through cognitive deliberation, which means that people are aware of holding such attitudes and beliefs.  In contrast, implicit associations are what lead to automatic responses; they are activated without conscious effort by exposure to strongly associated stimuli.  As a result, implicit associations are highly sensitive to context and often reflect culturally-pervasive themes.

Along with my colleagues Scott Reynolds of the University of Washington and Keith Leavitt of the United States Military Academy, I recently set out to study the implicit associations related to the term ‘business’. We chose this term because the concept is so common, and would be germane to anyone who has encountered moral issues at work.  Though individual understandings of the term vary in minor details, at an abstract level everyone holds a general understanding of what the term represents.  Furthermore, ‘business’ is generally linked to a particular set of norms and principles.  Research shows that the term is associated with an economic paradigm that emphasizes competition, fiduciary responsibilities, maximizing shareholder returns and other traditional, economics-minded, capitalistic values and behaviours.  

We made the following hypothesis: that an implicit assumption that business is moral will be positively associated with traditional, economics-minded, capitalistic values and beliefs.  Beyond holding just a simple description of what ‘business’ represents, we believed that people also hold a normative (i.e. good or bad) valuation of the term, such that it is implicitly assumed to be either inherently moral or immoral.  As Brown University’s Mark Suchman has argued, morality is an aspect of legitimacy, and thus, implicitly assuming that business is inherently moral would reflect a belief that the predominant economic paradigm with which business is associated is morally valid and legitimate.  

A person who believes that ‘business is inherently moral’ would likely believe that business should be an exercise in intense competition emphasizing shareholder obligations, financial performance and other traditionally capitalistic practices.  In contrast, an implicit belief that business is immoral would reflect a view that traditional business norms and practices are unwarrantedly aggressive and even harmful.  Those who hold an implicit assumption that business is immoral would be more leery of the traditional, economics-minded, capitalistic business paradigm and would instead lean towards more collaborative and more people-oriented views, values and beliefs.

In addition to these associations with individual values and beliefs, my colleagues and I believed that this implicit assumption would also be associated with definitively moral behaviours.  Empirical evidence of a link between elements of the traditional, economic paradigm and immoral behaviour can be found in research on deliberate moral decision-making.  One analysis suggests that ‘Machiavellianism’ -- an individual trait that emphasizes competition and self-advancement -- is associated with immoral behaviour.  In other research, the traditional economic paradigm is often represented as a more realistic and less idealistic view of the world, and research has demonstrated that realism is associated with immoral behaviour whereas idealism is associated with moral behaviour.  

Though a link between an implicit belief about the moral nature of business and moral behaviour may exist, the evidence suggests that such a link requires a ‘contextual cue’ in order for the association to become salient.  By definition, a contextual cue refers to ‘a message embedded in a discernable element of the environment’.  Contextual cues can convey a great deal of information, and the relevance of any single piece of information to automatically-driven behaviour is a function of the extent to which the cue taps into existing associations.  Thus, to the extent that a cue is salient to an existing implicit association, it can activate the association and initiate a behavioural response.  

A host of research supports the proposition that individual behaviour is shaped by the interaction between individuals and their environments, and as a result, we fully expected to find that explicit contextual cues activate implicit beliefs; however, research indicates that behaviour is also influenced by subtle contextual cues.  Thus,  employees of an organization can be characterized as ‘reflexive interactionists’ -- moral   

We expected to find that if an individual implicitly believes that business is inherently moral and is provided with contextual cues that are consistent with this implicit assumption, that belief will become salient to the individual and she will engage in behaviour that is consistent with that paradigm.  Moreover, the contextual cues would strengthen the implicit belief’s influence upon her associated behaviour.  As a result of this, ‘competitive tendencies’ can become ‘ultra-competitive behaviour’; ‘a preference for shareholders’ can become ‘an over-emphasis on shareholders’; and ‘capitalistic tendencies’ can be taken to extreme conclusions.  

We also expected to find that if an individual implicitly assumes that business is inherently immoral and is provided with contextual cues consistent with that association, she will become increasingly less likely to engage in immoral behaviour. Finally, we expected to find that an implicit assumption that business is moral and a competitive contextual cue would result in the most immoral behaviour in business-related tasks.  

In our first study, subjects were intentionally drawn from two distinct pools: an undergraduate Environmental Business Strategy class at a large university and an online forum on mountain biking.  The groups were statistically different in terms of age, work experience and political party affiliation.  Implicit assumptions about the moral nature of business were measured using a web-based version the Implicit Association Test (IAT).  In this IAT, the primary concept categories were ‘business’ and ‘sports’ and the secondary categories were ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical’.  ‘Sports’ was chosen as a control category for two reasons:  first, the features of sports are highly analogous to business (e.g. supervisors are similar to coaches); and second, sports and business share ideals about fair play and competition, and media exposure has made moral conduct salient in both domains.  

We also utilized two measures of traditional capitalistic values and beliefs.  First, we asked participants, “In general, how much consideration do you think managers should give to the following six groups?”  We listed six major stakeholder groups (e.g., customers, employees) and asked participants to distribute 100 points amongst them.   Traditional capitalistic values and beliefs were measured as the amount of points distributed to the shareholders/owners.  Next, we employed Albert Mehrabian's 20-item Measure of Libertarianism.  The items (e.g., “Our society can improve only with more government controls over individuals and businesses.” 1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) assess the extent to which an individual values personal freedom and the principles of a free market.  We associated more libertarian views with traditional, economics-minded, capitalistic values and beliefs.  

We began the study by asking participants, “Which response best describes your ‘gut reaction’ to the word ‘business’?” A score of 1 equaled ‘very good’, while 5 equaled ‘very bad’.    As expected, implicit beliefs were correlated with this response.  Next, we asked, “Which statement best captures what you believe: 1 = cheating is more prevalent in sports than in business; 5 = cheating is more prevalent in business than in sports.” As expected, the implicit belief was negatively correlated with this response.  Third, we asked, “Which statement best captures what you believe: 1 = business is much more ethical than sports; 5 = sports is much more ethical than business.”  As expected, the implicit belief was negatively correlated with this response.
 
In our second study, participants were 126 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory management course at a west coast university.  Participants completed the IAT via computer, and then completed a pen-and-paper ‘in-basket exercise’.  In the exercise, they were asked to imagine themselves as a manager in a fictitious company with several tasks to complete (e.g., ‘reassigning sales personnel’, ‘ordering office supplies’). The tasks relevant to our hypothesis tests were ‘reading a memo from the president’ and ‘completing an insurance claim’.  

The contextual cue was manipulated in the corporate memo:  in the first, ‘competitive version’ of the memo, the CEO praised the corporate culture, describing it as a one “that emphasizes success—we do what it takes to be competitive!”  In the second, non-competitive condition, the CEO described the culture as one “that emphasizes values—we always do what is right.”  Results indicate that those reading the competitive version viewed that culture as more competitive and success-oriented than the other condition.  We then measured the extent to which the participants believed that five socially-oriented concepts (e.g., ‘seeking the good of society’, ‘treating people fairly’) should be important to a firm.  The implicit assumption was measured with the same IAT exercise described in Study 1.  In this case, the implicit assumption was positive, reflecting the expected strength of the traditional business paradigm in a business school setting.  

In summary, our two studies demonstrates a distinct association between a given concept (in this case, ‘business’) and its normative valence and in addition, we demonstrated a relationship between an implicit assumption about the moral nature of business and moral behaviour.

In closing
Our research provides evidence that implicit assumptions about morality help to explain variance in moral behaviour, above and beyond that explained by explicit beliefs, which indicates the importance of both the deliberate and the intuitive aspects of decision-making.

These findings spark questions about the tension between organizational responsibility and individual moral agency.  Our findings suggest that implicit assumptions can be activated by the social context to influence immoral behaviour independent of cognitive and deliberate attempts to justify one’s actions.  In other words, perhaps organizations bear more responsibility for the actions of their members than is currently understood.  

This article is based on the paper, “Automatic Ethics: The Effects of Implicit Assumptions and Contextual Cues on Moral Behaviour” by Katherine DeCelles, assistant professor of Organizational Behaviour at the  Rotman School of Management; Scott Reynolds of the Foster School of Business, University of Washington; and Keith Leavitt of the Army Center for the Professional Military Ethic, United States Military Academy. This paper was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2010, Vol.95).  Rotman faculty research is ranked #11 in the world by the Financial Times.

[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]