Week 6

Question 1

Where does unethical behavior not come from?

Answer 1

Unethical behavior does not follow from a deliberate and careful decision in which we tradeoff the (moral) costs and benefits of actions.

Question 2

What is a result of sacred values and emotions with regards to understanding others?

Answer 2

Emotions may stand in the way of appreciating the situation from the perspective of someone who does not share these values or principles.

Question 3

What can you use Normative, descriptive, and prescriptive models
for?

Answer 3

When you know what people should do (normative) and what people actually do (descriptive) you can design processes to bring behavior closer to normative.

Question 4

What are normative models of ethics about?

Answer 4

What should people do? What is the morally right thing to do?

Question 5

What are descriptive models of ethics about?

Answer 5

What are people doing? What decisions do people make in situations and under which conditions do they act morally right?

Question 6

What are the 2 schools of normative models of ethics?

Answer 6

Consequentialist and deontological

Question 7

What is the consequentialist school of ethics?

Answer 7

Focus on the outcomes and focus is in maximizing total welfare.

Question 8

What is the deontological school of ethics?

Answer 8

Focus on rights and duties. Actions can be right or wrong independent of consequences.

Question 9

What are descriptive models of ethics split by?

Answer 9

Classic and contemporary approaches.

Question 10

What is Lawrence Kholbergs’ piramid about?

Answer 10

Morals are not born but developed, you develop as you get older.

Question 11

What is Kholberg’s Heinz dillema about?

Answer 11

Not the outcome, but the process of choice is important. People are graded based on the decision process.

Question 12

What are the steps in Rest’s model of ethical decision making?

Answer 12

• Moral awareness
• Moral judgment
• Moral intention
• Moral action

Question 13

What are 3 important assumptions of Rest’s model of ethical decision making?

Answer 13

1. Awareness is needed for a decision to have moral implications;
2. Behavioral intentions follow from reasoning/judgment;
3. Moral action requires moral intention.

Question 14

What is the implication for Rest’s model of ethical decision making?

Answer 14

If people want to make more ethical choices, let them become aware of the ethical assumptions.

Question 15

What is the empirical evidence regarding Rest’s model?

Answer 15

The 3 assumptions are often violated, our behavior often does not come from an intention to handle a certain way.

Question 16

What describes contemporary descriptive models?

Answer 16

Unethical behavior typically emerges from our system 1, not system 2. We are often unaware that we do things that we find unethical and find it easier to justify our unethical behavior.

Question 17

What is bounded ethicality?

Answer 17

The systematic and predictable psychological processes that lead people to engage in self-serving but unethically questionable behaviors. “we lie, steal and deceive as long as we can retain our self image of an honest and decent person”.

Question 18

What happens with system 1 and system 2 with ethicality?

Answer 18

System 1 often favors a self-serving action, and recognizing the moral consequences of our behavior requires careful, deliberate consideration of a decision.

Question 19

What is overclaiming credit?

Answer 19

People genuinely believe that they (and groups they belong to) are better than others. We have self-servings notions of fairness.

Question 20

What is the attribution bias?

Answer 20

My success is due to hard work and excellent skills, my failures are due to bad luck. Others’ successes are due to good luck, others’ failures are due to a lack of effort or ability.

Question 21

What is in group favoritism?

Answer 21

“Us” versus “them” mentality. We have self-serving biases towards our group. We often discriminate against other groups by doing in-group favors which harm out-groups.

Question 22

What are implicit attitudes?

Answer 22

Evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards something.

Most people have implicit attitudes towards people with certain characteristics. People are often unaware of them and may even deny having them. Implicit association tests unmask them.

Question 23

What is social pressure?

Answer 23

Pressure from a superior, peers, friends and family

Question 24

What is framing and motivated reasoning?

Answer 24

This is about focusing on favorable comparisons.
There is always a good excuse.
Taking baby steps rather than a big leap.
Omission-commission bias.

Question 25

What are sacred values?

Answer 25

sometimes system 1 tells us something is wrong, but upon reflection it is not entirely clear why.

Certain behaviors go against deeply felt values or principles. We may also misjudge others’ moral intentions.

Question 26

What is motivated blindness?

Answer 26

Deliberately look the other way when another person takes immoral or painful actions that benefit you.

Question 27

What is moral wiggle room?

Answer 27

Deliberately ignore information to avoid feeling bad about our own actions. When there is some uncertainty about the consequences, it’s easier to ignore our actions.

Question 28

What is indirect unethical behavior?

Answer 28

Delegating a decision weakens perceived responsibility for outcomes. Blame falls (partly) on party to which decision has been delegated.

Question 29

What is moral cleansing?

Answer 29

happens when we “compensate” bad behavior with good behavior to restore out self-image

Question 30

What is moral licensing?

Answer 30

Is a similar phenomenon but in the opposite order: using your good behavior in the past to allow yourself some bad behavior now.

Question 31

What are the 7 points how you can improve decision making?

Answer 31

1. Decision-analysis tools
2. Acquire expertise
3. Debiasing
4. Reason analogically
5. Take an outsiders’ view
6. Understand biases in others
7. Nudge