morality

Justifications Shape Ethical Blind Spots

To some extent, unethical behavior results from people's limited attention to ethical considerations, which results in an ethical blind spot. Here, we focus on the role of ambiguity in shaping people's ethical blind spots, which in turn lead to their …

Self-Serving Justifications

Unethical behavior by “ordinary” people poses significant societal and personal challenges. We present a novel framework centered on the role of self-serving justification to build upon and advance the rapidly expanding research on intentional …

Moral firmness

Firm moral judgment deems dishonest acts as categorically wrong, and considers any self-serving justification for them as further dishonesty. People, however, commonly use self-serving justifications in order to feel honest even as they behave …

Honesty requires time — a reply to Foerster et al. (2013)

Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications)

Recent research suggests that refraining from cheating in tempting situations requires self-control, which indicates that serving self-interest is an automatic tendency. However, evidence also suggests that people cheat to the extent that they can …

Dishonestly increasing the likelihood of winning

People not only seek to avoid losses or secure gains; they also attempt to create opportunities for obtaining positive outcomes. When distributing money between gambles with equal probabilities, people often invest in turning negative gambles into …