We posit that the modern airplane is a social microcosm of class-based society, and that the increasing incidence of “air rage” can be understood through the lens of inequality. Research on ...inequality typically examines the effects of relatively fixed, macrostructural forms of inequality, such as socioeconomic status; we examine how temporary exposure to both physical and situational inequality, induced by the design of environments, can foster antisocial behavior. We use a complete set of all onboard air rage incidents over several years from a large, international airline to test our predictions. Physical inequality on airplanes—that is, the presence of a first class cabin—is associated with more frequent air rage incidents in economy class. Situational inequality—boarding from the front (requiring walking through the first class cabin) versus the middle of the plane—also significantly increases the odds of air rage in both economy and first class. We show that physical design that highlights inequality can trigger antisocial behavior on airplanes. More broadly, these results point to the importance of considering the design of environments—from airplanes to office layouts to stadium seating—in understanding both the form and emergence of antisocial behavior.
Does power corrupt a moral identity, or does it enable a moral identity to emerge? Drawing from the power literature, we propose that the psychological experience of power, although often associated ...with promoting self-interest, is associated with greater self-interest only in the presence of a weak moral identity. Furthermore, we propose that the psychological experience of power is associated with less self-interest in the presence of a strong moral identity. Across a field survey of working adults and in a lab experiment, individuals with a strong moral identity were less likely to act in self-interest, yet individuals with a weak moral identity were more likely to act in self-interest, when subjectively experiencing power. Finally, we predict and demonstrate an explanatory mechanism behind this effect: The psychological experience of power enhances moral awareness among those with a strong moral identity, yet decreases the moral awareness among those with a weak moral identity. In turn, individuals' moral awareness affects how they behave in relation to their self-interest.
Existing work on attribution theory distinguishes between external and internal attributions (i.e., "I overcame adversity due to luck" vs. "my own effort"). We introduce the construct of relational ...resilience attributions (i.e., "due to help from other people") as a critical, but overlooked form of external attribution that predicts compassion toward others. We first document the presence of internal, relational (social external), and situational (nonsocial external) resilience attributions among people who have overcome unemployment, showing the predominance of internal attributions (Study 1). Next, we show that relational attributions uniquely predict compassion toward people struggling to overcome a range of challenges, including losing a loved one (Study 2), quitting smoking (Study 3a), workplace bullying (Study 3b), divorce (Study 4a), and pandemic survival (Study 4b). To examine causality and the malleability of relational attributions, we experimentally induce relational attributions among ex-smokers (Study 5), advanced degree holders (Study 6), and those who completed a fatiguing task (Study 7). We further find that gratitude is one critical link between one's own relational attributions and compassion toward others. Despite the prevailing tendency for people to make internal attributions for their resilience, forming relational attributions is positively associated with greater compassion for others struggling to endure adversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Previous examinations of environmental stressors in organizations have mostly emphasized their dysfunctional effects on individuals’ emotions and behaviors. Extending this work by drawing from the ...social functional perspective on emotion, we propose that customers’ negative emotional responses to environmental stressors in organizations can exert both dysfunctional and functional effects on customer–employee interactions. Specifically, we theorize that situational and physiological forms of environmental stressors can be dysfunctional by incurring customer anger, precipitating customer aggression, and diminishing employee helpfulness. We further theorize that situational relative to physiological stressors can exert functional effects in inducing customer fear that elicits empathy and helpfulness from employees. We test our model via an archival, observational, and critical incident yoked experimental study set in the airport context. This research contributes to stress theory and its organizational application by integrating theory from the social functional approach to emotion with appraisal‐based theories of stress in organizations.
Automatic Ethics Reynolds, Scott J; Leavitt, Keith; DeCelles, Katherine A
Journal of applied psychology,
07/2010, Volume:
95, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We empirically examine the reflexive or automatic aspects of moral decision making. To begin, we develop and validate a measure of an individual's implicit assumption regarding the inherent morality ...of business. Then, using an in-basket exercise, we demonstrate that an implicit assumption that business is inherently moral impacts day-to-day business decisions and interacts with contextual cues to shape moral behavior. Ultimately, we offer evidence supporting a characterization of employees as reflexive interactionists: moral agents whose automatic decision-making processes interact with the environment to shape their moral behavior.
We propose a four-stage model of the organizational actions that potentially increase the speed and likelihood that an organization will restore its legitimacy with stakeholders following a ...transgression. Organizations that work to discover the facts of the transgression, provide an appropriate explanation of their wrongdoing, accept and serve an equitable punishment, and make consistent internal and external rehabilitative changes increase the likelihood of meeting stakeholder demands and, consequently, have a higher probability of successfully achieving reintegration with stakeholders than those that do not.
False accusations of wrongdoing are common and can have grave consequences. In six studies, we document a worrisome paradox in perceivers’ subjective judgments of a suspect’s guilt. Specifically, we ...found that people (including online panelists, n = 4,983, and working professionals such as fraud investigators and auditors, n = 136) use suspects’ angry responses to accusations as cues of guilt. However, we found that such anger is an invalid cue of guilt and is instead a valid cue of innocence; accused individuals (university students, n = 230) and online panelists (n = 401) were angrier when they are falsely relative to accurately accused. Moreover, we found that individuals who remain silent are perceived to be at least as guilty as those who angrily deny an accusation.
Does emotional intelligence promote behavior that strictly benefits the greater good, or can it also advance interpersonal deviance? In the investigation reported here, we tested the possibility that ...a core facet of emotional intelligence—emotion-regulation knowledge—can promote both prosocial and interpersonally deviant behavior. Drawing from research on how the effective regulation of emotion promotes goal achievement, we predicted that emotion-regulation knowledge would strengthen the effects of other-oriented and self-oriented personality traits on prosocial behavior and interpersonal deviance, respectively. Two studies supported our predictions. Among individuals with higher emotion-regulation knowledge, moral identity exhibited a stronger positive association with prosocial behavior in a social dilemma (Study 1), and Machiavellianism exhibited a stronger positive association with interpersonal deviance in the workplace (Study 2). Thus, emotion-regulation knowledge has a positive side and a dark side.
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