Behavioural Ethics
BPV_IEBE_2021
April 22, 2021
Tommaso Reggiani
tommaso.reggiani@econ.muni.cz
Main references for this class
- Bazerman, M. H., & Gino, F. (2012). Behavioral ethics: Toward a deeper understanding of moral judgment
and dishonesty. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 8, 85-104.
- Irlenbusch, B., & Villeval, M. C. (2015). Behavioral ethics: how psychology influenced economics and how
economics might inform psychology?. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 87-92.
- Gino, F. (2015). Understanding ordinary unethical behavior: Why people who value morality act
immorally. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3,107-111.
- Sezer, O., Gino, F., & Bazerman, M. H. (2015). Ethical blind spots: Explaining unintentional unethical
behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 77-81.
Ethics & (behavioural) Economics
→Individual moral responsibilities:
cheating, stealing, bribing…
Moral Dilemma…
Consequentialist Deontologist
→ outcomes
utilitarianism (Bentham)
→ intentions
morals (Kant)
Business Ethics
vs
Behavioural Ethics
Business Ethics
• It’s about how ‘business agents’ should behave
• It’s mainly grounded on classical philosophical reflections
• Theoretical approach
• Normative perspective
• “ethical sophistication” through philosophical reflection/exercise
…does it work in this way?
Behavioral Ethics
• Fairly recent field of academic research
Behavioral ethics addresses the study of systematic and predictable ways in which
individuals make (un)ethical decisions and judge the ethical decisions of others,
ways that are at odds with intuition and the benefits of the broader society
• Empirically grounded
• Psychologically informed
• Positive analysis (non-judjamental approach)
→ experimental philosophy + social psychology + behavioral/exp. Economics
• Behavioral Ethics … moral dilemmas
→ behavioral decision theory : trade-offs between good and bad
? What are the factors that affect this trade-off ?
→ Moral Malleability
* Authority
Milgram 1974
→ Torture
Zimbardo 1971
→ Stanford Prison Experiment (2 weeks…)
16Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
17Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
The Stanford Prison
Experiment
August 15-21, 1971 18
19Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
20Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
21Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
22Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
23Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
Credits
Created from the original slide show conceived, designed and executed
by Philip Zimbardo and Greg White with the technical assistance of
Don Johann, and produced by Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
24Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
Zimbardo 1971
→ Stanford Prison Experiment (2 weeks…)
* Anonymity
Task Results
* Intermediation
A major pharmaceutical company, X, had a cancer drug that was
minimally profitable. The fixed costs were high and the market
was limited. But, the patients who used the drug really needed
it. The pharmaceutical was making the drug for $2.50/pill (all
costs included), and was only selling it for $3/pill. The pharmaceutical
firm raised the price of the drug from $3/pill to $9/pill,
thus increasing the value of the drug to company X by $10million.
A major pharmaceutical company, X, had a cancer drug that was
minimally profitable. The fixed costs were high and the market
was limited. But, the patients who used the drug really needed
it. The pharmaceutical was making the drug for $2.50/pill (all
costs included), and was only selling it for $3/pill. The pharmaceutical firm
sold the rights to produce the drug to a smaller company Y for $12 million.
In order to sustain the costs, company Y raised the price of the drug to
$15/pill
* Depletion
• Depletion
• System 1 vs System 2
• “moral muscle”
• honesty
“Bounded Ethicality” (…bounded rationality)
# In-group discrimination
Messick (1994) argues that mortgage loan discrimination against minorities
is much more likely to result from lenders’ unconscious favoritism toward
in-groups than from explicit hostility toward out-groups.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-03-01/news/9403010062_1_minority-applications-credit-worthiness-discrimination
# Moral balance
Nisan’s (1991) moral balance model suggests that people compute a personal moral balance
based on their actions that are morally relevant within a given time frame and do not go below
their minimum. At any point, good deeds raise the balance and bad ones lower it.
Monin & Miller (2001) conducted experiments in which they found that a prior moral act can
license later morally questionable behavior. In one study, participants were presented with
job selection tasks. In one such task, half the participants could select a stellar African
American applicant and thus establish nonracist credentials. The other half of the participants
were in a control condition and were asked to pick from an all-white applicant pool. Compared
with participants in the control condition, participants in the black-candidate condition were
more likely to express that a second, unrelated job in a police force would be better suited for
a white person.
…Christmas donations
# Moral Hypocrisy & Incomplete lying (social image concerns)
- Toss the coin for 5 times
- You’ll get 1 EUR each time you self-report “tail”
- 4 out o 5 “tail”…
To know more on this topic…