L6 - Behavioural Ethics and Bounded Ethicality Flashcards
What is behavioural ethics?
Study of the psychological, situational and social forces that influence ethical behaviour.
It is the systematic ways in which humans depart from the intuitive ethical expectations and goals of the broader society
aka BIASES!!!!!!
What are the should and want self?
The should self - the long term desire to be good and ethical person and to be seen as such by others. if you fail, you’ll feel bad.
the Want self - short term desires to behave in a way that would advance one’s self-interest - reflected in emotional, impulsive and hot-headed decisions.
What does it mean by morality is dynamic and malleable?
Morality isn’t a stable trait or stage of development, some situations where we will behave rationally, and others where we won’t.
What is bounded ethicality?
The systematic and predictable psychological processes that lead people to engage in ethically questionable behaviours that are inconsistent with their own preferred ethics.
the ‘bound’ refers to limits on the quality of decision making processes..
The drive to maintain the view of oneself as moral can be a barrier to recognising otherwise visible conflicts of interest - barrier to see one’s flaws.
- assume one is ABOVE bias
- blinds ourselves
Intuitionist morality?
Proposes that moral judgement is caused by quick moral intuitions and followed by slow moral reasoning.
eg. the emotional dog and its rational tail - emotions drive quick behaviours…. rationality comes later.
How did kahneman and tversky describe the boundedness of human reasoning?
- people make decisions that are inconsistent, inefficient and based on irrelevant information
- people rely on strategies known as heuristics and biases. - implicit thinking
- Found that implicit (fast) was less rational than explicit (slow) thinking
What are framing effects?
The way we frame ethical dilemmas highlights specific aspects of dilemmas, as opposed to a different frame.
eg. “chance of saving all 600 people, or no one” or “chance that no one will die, or all 600 will die”
has many criticisms bc artificial, but still v. powerful
What does the linda problem show us?
Representiveness heuristic and conjunction fallacy.
- the info in the paragraph is biasing
- biases us to make an unrational choice.
What is the semantic priming and semantic network????
Says that the speed of response to one stimulus in the context of another stimulus is an indicator of the underlying strength of association between the two.
- Demonstrated w/ semantic priming effects, through spreading activation.
- seeing the word doctor prior to nurse makes your recognition response for nurse faster than if you saw the word yellow before nurse.
What do we think is the basis of prejudice?
Theorised that prejudice is based from man’s natural tendency to form generalisations and categories to represent an oversimplification of his world and experience.
What are implicit stereotypes?
Groups and categories w/ attributes, with traces of past experience, that allow us to make quick judgements.
sight will auto activate a thought, spread it and activate a range of attributes and influences us to act @ an unconscious level.
–> implicit association task (IAT)
What is the Implicit Association Task?
This is where participants were shown faces, and had to press buttons. slowest for “black and good” and fastest for “white and good”
supports semantic priming. implicit effects despite our best conscious effects.
in order to override the stereotype, it takes effort and TIME - thus slower RT.
we all have self-concept, and thus try not to be racist.
How was the dishonesty of honest people investigated?
Task: problem-solving for monetary reward.
Control - once time is up, experimenter checked their performance
Experimental con - they self-reported their performance on collection slip and then shredded test sheet.
= OPPORTUNITY TO LIE
found that self reports of performance in the shredder condition was significantly higher (up to 50%)than in the control condition.
What affects dishonesty?
- resource depletion
if you do another self-control task prior, then subjects overclaim the rewards in the shredder condition. - observing ingroup member behaving unethically increases dishonesty
- moral saliency
how salient are the rules of morality at the time???
reading the university honour code prior = decreases dishonesty
Describe in-group effects on ethical behaviour
People exposed to an in-group member’s unethical behaviour, align with the behaviour and behave dishonestly themselves.
consistent with social identity theory - people perceive questionable behaviour to be ore acceptable when exhibited by in group members.
influences the way we -choose- to behave.
