Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: The interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality - Aquino et al - 2009 - Article

Our world has known many barbaric and sadistic people. People tried to explain this by accepting that some people are moral and others immoral. This, however, does not capture the full nature of human beings. Every person can violate standards that he or she holds dear and a horrible person can sometimes show kindness. It all depends on the situation we are in. Situations influence behaviour and they can also have an effect on moral conduct. One study showed that people were less likely to help a person in need when there was a time pressure (hurry up!). But characteristics also matter. Research has found that people with internalized altruistic values, a sense of social responsibility and empathic concerns are also more moral. The writers of this article propose that situational factors and a stable individual characteristic together influence moral behaviour. This stable individual characteristic is called the centrality of moral identity. Moral behaviour is the demonstration of actions that are socially oriented and to the needs and interests of others.

This article will look at how situational factors interact with individual characteristics to influence moral behaviour. This article looks at the social-cognitive theory of Bandura. According to this model moral-identity is a powerful choice of moral motivation because people desire to maintain self-consistency. So when you have moral characteristics and traits you will behave in a moral manner to maintain self-consistency. Also, this model suggests that certain facets of identity are not always that accessible in certain situations. This means that situational factors may activate a person’s moral identity or activate other facets of identity and make the moral identity more or less accessible.

Determinants of moral behaviour include moral reasoning, moral maturity, moral personality and moral commitment. None of these, however, is fully capable of predicting of situational variability in moral behaviour. Some researchers think that we have to look at the social-cognitive theory to predict variability in moral behaviour. Our life experiences create our knowledge structures and because of this individuals differ in their self-conception. When moral identity occupies a greater centrality within the self-concept of a person, the moral identity should be activated more strongly and frequently for this person. The writers of this article think that the greater the centrality of moral identity, the higher its activation potential and the stronger it affects moral behaviour. People also have different identities and play different roles. One person can be a parent, friend and teacher. Which identity somebody takes on at a certain moment depends on how accessible a certain identity is in a given situation. So when you find yourself in a certain situation in which the moral identity is very much accessible, you will probably take this moral identity on. Also, the writers of this article thing that it may depend on your goals which identity will be activated. When your goal is to affiliate or to form a community you will be more likely to activate the moral identity.

Experiment 1

In the first experiment, the researchers wanted to see how a moral prime and the centrality of moral identity influence moral behaviour. Participants first did a survey about the centrality of moral identity and demographic items. The next day, they went to a lab for the experiment. One half of the participants was in the control condition and the other half in the moral prime condition. They were told that they were going to be asked about their general knowledge and personal opinions about things and then had to make a series of decisions. So first they had to do the general knowledge task, then a measure of accessibility of moral identity in their self-concept, afterwards a measure of intention to enact a moral behaviour and demographic items.

The general task asked of the participants in the control condition to list the five largest cities in the United States. The participants in the prime condition received an additional task. They were asked to list as many of the ten commandments as they could. Afterwards, participants received a list with nine characteristics that described a person. The characteristics were construals of a moral prototype. Participants were asked to think about how the person who possesses these traits thinks, feels and acts. The participants were asked how they would feel if they possessed these traits. They were asked on a 7-point scale if they would feel good about themselves, if these traits are important to them, if they would feel ashamed, if these traits weren’t important to them and if they desire to have these traits. Afterwards, participants were asked to how they saw themselves at that moment. They could indicate on a 5-point scale and there were five identities: a moral person, a successful person, a family member, an independent person and a student. The last task was to read a story and to give the intention to act. Participants had to imagine that they were the manager of a cereal company and that a company that does good stuff for cancer patients had approached them and asked them to donate 25 cents for every sold product to their cancer fund. However, this would mean that you would probably not receive a year-end bonus. The participants were asked what the percentage chance was that they would initiate the cause-related marketing program and how likely they were to initiate the cause-related program.

The results show that when a situational factor (moral prime) activates a person’s moral self-schema this person will be more likely to act prosocial. The influences, however, is not the same across all people. People whose moral identity has low centrality will experience stronger affects from moral priming than people whose moral identity has high centrality. This is because priming has greater potential to increase the accessibility of moral identity in the working self-concept.

Experiment 2

In the second experiment participants were told they would participate in a negotiation study. Participants were told they had to complete two surveys and then had to do a 10 minute role playing negotiation task. The role playing game was not true, they only did the survey but experimenters needed to use the role play to justify the collection of behavioural intention measures. The first survey was about individual difference measures (one of them the centrality of moral identity), the second a pre-negotiation questionnaire. Participants received a set of confidential instructions about the negotiations they thought they would have to participate in. Participants were told that participants who performed well would receive 100 USD. Participants were told that they had to play the role of a manager and they had to negotiate with a job interviewee what their starting salary would be. The person that negotiates the lowest price would receive 100 USD. That is at least what they were told. Participants were asked what the chance was that they would tell a lie to the job interviewees.

The results show that the presence of a financial reward for a good performance during a negotiation increased the accessibility of an achievement-oriented identity and decreased the accessibility of a moral identity. This happened especially for the participants whose moral identity had higher centrality. Because of this, intentions to lie increased.

Experiment 3

The third experiment looked like the second. In this experiment, however, the participants did really negotiate about a salary. The participants had to fill in a certain questionnaire about demographics and some measures of centrality of morality. Two days later, they participated in the negotiation task. Some of the participants who played the manager were put in the experimental group and received the instruction to negotiate a low salary. Also, they knew that the job candidate would be eliminated from the job after six months. The participants who had to take on the role of the job employee received the instruction to not accept any salary offer unless they received a verbal guarantee from the managers that they would remain at the same job for at least two years. They were instructed to ask managers a question about job stability before discussing starting salary. The experimenters wanted to see whether the managers would lie about the job stability. The results were the same as for the second study. The presence of a financial incentive increased people’s willingness to lie during a negotiation. The financial incentive decreased the accessibility of moral identity and this was especially the case for participants with higher moral identity centrality.

Experiment 4

In the fourth experiment, participants first had to fill in a questionnaire that measured their centrality of moral identity and the social value orientation. Then participants came to the lab and they were assigned to the control group or primed group. The participants were given a handwriting task and the cover story was that the experimenter wanted to see whether somebody’s personality was reflected in their handwriting. Participants were given a matrix and this contained nine words. In the prime condition these words were about morality (like caring, compassion, fair) and in the control condition these words had no moral content (like book, chair). Each participant wrote down the words four separate times. The participants were then told to think about these words and write a short story about themselves with the use of each of these words at least once. Then participants took place behind a computer and they were told that they would be put into a group with four other people in the laboratory. They were told that they would participate in task about investment decisions. Also, they were told that the other participants gave them feedback after each decision, but this was in fact the feedback of the experimenter and everybody received the same feedback. Participants had to decide during every decision whether they wanted to invest in a joint account or a personal account. The points in the joint account would be shared equally among group members. Of course, it is tempting to put everything in a personal account, but if everybody would do that then the group would not earn interest. The results of this study showed that participants with higher moral identity centrality first cooperated with others, but after receiving the feedback about the selfish behaviour of others they decided to reduce the level of cooperation.

Looking back at these studies, it seems that the hypotheses of the experimenters were supported. It turned out that financial incentives decreased prosocial behaviour and this can be seen as a situational cue. When the moral identity was accessible, people showed more moral behaviour.