TIN BEHAVIOR
CAL PERSONALITY
Bersoff / MOTIVATED
AND SOCIAL
REASONING
PSYCHOLOGY
AND UNETHI-
BULLE-
Why Good People Sometimes Do Bad Things:
Motivated Reasoning and Unethical Behavior
David M. Bersoff
Diogenes Project
The hypothesis that unethical behavior is promoted when people
are able to develop and maintain a biased characterization of
an unethical action as being morally acceptable was tested in an
experiment in which 120 par ticipants were overpaid for taking
par t in a study. The variable of interest—whether the par tici-
pants pointed out the overpayment—was examined in a between-
participants design under three sets of contrasting manipulations
designed to affect differentially participants’ abilities to convince
themselves that keeping the overpayment was acceptable. Logistic
regressions revealed a decrease in unethical behavior when
participants’ abilities to construct neutralizations for keeping
the overpayment were impeded. A follow-up study indicated that
these results were unlikely to have been a consequence of changes
in the ethicality of keeping the money as a function of the specific
experimental manipulations used. The influence of moral atti-
tudes and gender on moral behavior was also examined. Moral
attitude measures were not predictive, but males were more likely
to act unethically.
U nethical behavior is not a rare event, nor is it preva-
lent among only certain segments of society. In a random
sample of 401 people drawn from a large metropolitan
community in the southwest, 25% of the respondents
reported having evaded taxes in the past, a fifth had
stolen something worth more than $20, and more than
half had taken an item worth less than $20 at sometime
in their lives (Grasmick &Scott, 1982). Research suggests
that one in three employees steals at work (Hefter, 1986),
whereas the average base rate of employee theft in the
retail sector is an even higher 42% (Werner, Jones, &
Steffy, 1989). In a study by a security firm, 500 shoppers
were chosen at random and followed. One in 12 was
observed shoplifting (Farrell & Ferrara, 1985).
In apparent contradiction to the preceding data, a
major theme in social psychology has been the influence
of self-image management processes (e.g., Steele, 1988;
Tetlock & Manstead, 1985; Tedeschi, 1981) and self-
esteem needs (Greenwald & Breckler, 1985; Schlenker,
28
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1980, 1986; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986)
on social behavior. The maintenance of self-esteem or
self-worth has been characterized as being among the
strongest and most persistent of human goals (Hales,
1985). Research has even shown that it is important to
individuals to live up to their internal standards of right
and wrong in the absence of external sanctioning agents
(Cialdini, Finch, & De Nicholas, 1990; Hales, 1985; Reis,
1981). If an insult or potential insult to one’s self-image
cannot be avoided, then a whole series of ego-defensive
processes are brought to bear. These include various forms
of motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990), self-handicapping
(Jones & Berglas, 1978), and verbal strategies such as
accounts (Scott & Lyman, 1968). The ultimate goal of
these defensive processes is to sustain a phenomenal
experience of the self as being moral, competent, good,
stable, and capable of choice and control (Steele, 1988).
Given the well-documented importance of self-esteem
protection as a social motive, it is difficult to explain how
people freely come to decide to adopt an unethical
course of action, thereby compromising their image of
themselves as fair, moral, and honest, without experienc-
ing significant amounts of dissonance, anxiety, and
stress. There are, nodoubt, instances in which a person’s
tendency to act in accordance with moral dictates, al-
though an important factor underlying social behavior,
Author’s Note: This research was done under the auspices of the
Diogenes Project (our lamps are lit and the search is on) and was
funded by both the Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania
departments of psychology. Study 1 is based on my doctoral disserta-
tion. I would like to thank the members of my thesis advisor y committee
at Yale—Joan Miller, Mahzarin Banaji, William McGuire, Robert Abel-
son, and Assaad Azzi—for their general guidance and specific sugges-
tions. My gratitude also extends to Allison Marks for her inspired
portrayal of a laconic disbursements clerk. Correspondence concern-
ing this article should be addressed to David M. Bersoff, Director,
Diogenes Project, 25 Dillon Road, Woodbridge, CT 06525, e-mail:
dbersoff@yankelovich.com.
PSPB, Vol. 25 No. 1, Januar y 1999 28-39
© 1999 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
 Bersoff / MOTIVATED REASONING AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
is overpowered by other motivators (Rest, 1983). An
expectation that moral considerations must always be
given priority in social situations would fail to take into
account psychological realities (Williams, 1981).
However, desperation or the furthering of some deep
personal belief seem unlikely motivators in situations
involving the failure to pay parking tickets, cheating on
income taxes, the pilfering of office supplies, and other
such minor moral indiscretions. In fact, research on
employee theft does not support the theory that workers
steal, in general, because they need the money (Murphy,
1993). It is such relatively small, nonduress-driven social
breaches that should be most affected by self-presenta-
tion and self-esteem influences, and yet, these are the
types of immoral behaviors that are the most common.
For example, three out of four shoplifters can afford to
buy the merchandise they have taken, and many are even
caught carrying enough money to pay for the lifted items
(Francis, 1979). Surely, one’s self-esteem and moral in-
tegrity must be worth more than some small item from
a store that could be more easily bought than stolen.
In attempting to explain deviant behavior among
juvenile delinquents, Sykes and Matza (1957) asserted
that most delinquents possess conventional values and
are only able to commit delinquent acts by subscribing
to certain rationalizations that define such acts as situ-
ationally appropriate. These rationalizations, known as
techniques of neutralization, precede deviant behavior,
making delinquency possible by neutralizing potential
disapproval from both internal and external sources.
Thus, social controls that serve to inhibit deviant behav-
ior are rendered inoperative, and the individual is free
to engage in delinquent behavior without serious self-
esteem damage (Sykes & Matza, 1957).
My contention is that neutralization-like thinking is
not unique to delinquent populations. But whereas neu-
tralization, as originally conceived, is presented as a
trait-like, generalized learned response pattern (Akers,
1977; Sykes & Matza, 1957), I see such thinking as being
highly vulnerable to situational influences and easily
manipulated. In essence, what I want to argue is that a
redefinition or distorted construal of an unethical action
as being morally acceptable often precedes and fosters
decisions to act in an unethical manner among people
generally.
Such erroneous characterizations of actions place
their performance in accord with people’s prosocial
motivations. As a result, self-esteem protection processes
are less likely to be activated in opposition to the action
being considered. In addition, these distortions allow
people to act contrary to the dictates of their values or
attitudes without experiencing cognitive dissonance or
any of the other discomforts that have been associated
with perceived inconsistencies between one’s attitudes
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29
and behavior, such as embarrassment (Abelson, 1983).
For example, work in the area of helping behavior
(Schwartz, 1977) suggests that a high personal cost asso-
ciated with engaging in a particular helping behavior
may lead people to form distorted judgments regarding
the reality of the need or their personal responsibility to
help in a given situation. This defensive denial
(Schwartz, 1977) can be such that the conditions for
prosocial moral norm activation are not met, which in
turn, can lead to a decision not to help another, even
among people who possess the prerequisite values and
attitudes (Tyler, Orwin, & Schurer, 1982).
Although they are used to explain different kinds of
behavior, neutralization and defensive denial can be
seen as related forms of directional, motivated reasoning
(Kunda, 1990). In a sense, both allow individuals to feel
committed to certain prosocial norms and values and, at
the same time, free them to perform acts contrary to
those norms and values. Indeed, if the decision to refrain
from a particular unethical action is conceptualized as
involving personal cost, that is, the denial to oneself of
the potential benefit this act might bring, then the mo-
tivating influence underlying neutralization-like think-
ing may be seen as similar to that underlying defensive
denial—self-interest.
To be sure, the notion of motivated cognition is not
new, but it seems to have been used mainly to explain
nonmoral phenomena such as self-serving causal attri-
butions, attitude change, lack of compliance with health-
promoting behavior, and the failure to help others,
usually in situations involving personal cost (Kunda,
1990). One consistent exception is cognitive dissonance
theory, which is often studied in the context of getting
subjects to lie to another person or to act contrary to
their previously stated moral convictions with potentially
harmful consequences (see, e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith,
1959; Goethals, Cooper & Naficy, 1979). Dissonance,
however, occurs after a person has committed to a behav-
ior, usually as a result of subtle but effective social pres-
sure on the part of the experimenter. Because of its post
hoc etiology, cognitive dissonance is not useful in ac-
counting for how people initially decide to perform
actions contrary to their own values. In fact, fear of
dissonance, that is, of feeling hypocritical, should be
another compelling reason to avoid ethical indiscretions.
In general, very little work has been done on the
direct cognitive precursors to unethical action, especially
among nondelinquent, noncriminal populations in-
volved in spontaneous, unambiguously unethical behav-
ior. What people are telling themselves just before com-
mitting a social breach that enables them to freely
behave in a way that could potentially compromise their
self-image and contradict their ethical beliefs is largely
an unanswered question. For the most part, researchers
30 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
have examined the relationship between moral judg-
ment and behavior by looking for a correlation between
attitudes, measured in regard to hypothetical scenarios,
and specific behaviors performed prior or subsequent to
the attitude measurement session (see Blasi, 1980, for a
review). Such data do not address the causal question of
how people who know the moral rules come to break
them in some situations. Even work that has looked at
unethical behavior experimentally, such as that involving
deindividuation (e.g., Zimbardo, 1970) or obedience
(e.g., Milgram, 1974), does not speak directly to the
issues I am raising because of its reliance on external
pressure and tacit experimenter approval to get subjects
to act immorally. Subjects are directly asked or even
ordered by the experimenter, for example, to administer
shock to another.
Representing a departure from the way unethical
behavior has been examined in past research, an experi-
ment was performed in which participants were “acci-
dentally” overpaid for their participation in a study. The
dependent variable was whether the participants sponta-
neously pointed out the overpayment. Specifically, my
hypothesis was that participants’ behavior in this situ-
ation would be affected by manipulating the environ-
ment surrounding the overpayment in such a way that
participants would have either an easier or harder time
constructing and accepting biased, morally acceptable
characterizations of keeping the money.
Generally, the strategy was to make potential neutrali-
zations more or less viable or accessible to participants.
In particular, I expected participants’ ability to neutral-
ize keeping the overpayment to be differentially im-
peded under three sets of contrasting manipulations.
The first manipulation involved asking subjects explicitly
if they had received the correct payment as opposed to
just setting the money before them to take without
question. This should have made denial of responsibility
neutralizations (Sykes & Matza, 1957), based on the
premise that they were passive recipients of the money
and thus really did nothing wrong, less available to the
participants. The second manipulation entailed leading
subjects to believe that the overpayment was from an
individual graduate student whom they had met person-
ally as opposed to from a big, faceless company. Explicitly
drawing a link between an action and its harmful conse-
quences to a specific individual should have undermined
denial of harm/victim neutralizations (Sykes & Matza,
1957) based on the premise that the action was victimless
or harmless and therefore acceptable. An empirical jus-
tification for using these two particular manipulations is
presented in Study 2. The last manipulation designed to
inhibit keeping the overpayment involved getting par-
ticipants to criticize someone else for using neutraliza-
tions to justify a similar unethical action as opposed to
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criticizing someone else for using neutralizations to jus-
tify a completely unrelated action outside the moral
domain. This manipulation is somewhat analogous to
attitude inoculation (McGuire, 1964). By inducing the
would-be neutralizers to judge and criticize arguments
similar to those they might have been tempted to use
themselves, they should have had a more difficult time
using versions of these same neutralizations to justify
their own action. In a sense, participants were inoculated
or vaccinated against neutralization-based reasoning by
their prior exposure to such reasoning. I further ex-
pected that combinations of these manipulations would
have an additive effect. Specifically, I hypothesized that
one neutralization-impeding manipulation would lead
to less unethical behavior than none, and two such
manipulations combined in a single condition would
reduce the number of participants failing to point out
the overpayment even further than one alone.
STUDY 1
Method
PARTICIPANTS
Participants were solicited via posters advertising the
opportunity to take part in psychology experiments for
a fee of $5 per hour. From among those who volunteered
to participate, only people in college or graduate school
who were younger than 30 years of age were recruited.
A total of 120 participants comprised the final sample.
Twenty participants (10 men and 10 women) were ran-
domly assigned to each of six conditions.
PROCEDURES
Participants were brought into the laboratory under
the pretense of being needed to pilot test a piece of
educational computer software designed to help school
children learn geographical information. The software
used was a simple game that could be set to present
either the name of a European country or its capital to
players who would then be asked to supply the other
piece of information.
Condition 1: Baseline. In this condition, participants
were led to believe that the study was being sponsored
by NORDCOM INC., a (fictitious) European electronics
company.1 After completing the consent form, partici-
pants were handed a one-page information sheet con-
taining a short geographical description of Norway, the
home of NORDCOM. The sheet also explained NORD-
COM’s interest in the data being gathered and served as
an introduction to the study. As a further introduction,
participants were told that the purpose of the study was
to look at aspects of learning and memory as they relate
to the recall of geographical information and to pilot test
 Bersoff / MOTIVATED REASONING AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
a software package being developed for use in the
schools to help children learn geography.
After having the rules of the computer quiz game
explained to them, participants were instructed to go
through all 35 countries once and to make an effort to
memorize any of the capitals they missed. On complet-
ing this first round, participants’ number correct and
overall score were recorded, and they were instructed
immediately to go through the countries again. After
Round 2’s scores were recorded, participants were given
a short questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaire was
presented to participants with the explanation that a
distraction task was required to see if their Round 2
versus Round 1 increase in the number of capitals cor-
rect (all participants got more items correct the second
time) was a long-term memory gain or a short-term
memory gain. In this condition, the distraction task was
a short vignette about a man and woman who worked in
the same office. The woman had a crush on this man
who obviously had no interest in her. Participants were
asked to evaluate five rationalizations the woman used to
justify her belief in the man’s interest in her despite the
evidence to the contrary.
After they completed the questionnaire, participants
were told that they needed to go through the game one
more time but that there would be two changes. First,
instead of being given the countries and asked for the
capitals, they would be given the capitals and asked for
the countries. This, they were told, was to see if geo-
graphic information was stored in memory in both di-
rections. Such extraneous details were included to fur-
ther the illusion that the participants were taking part in
a real, multicondition cognitive psychology experiment.
The second difference was more central to the true
experiment. Participants were told that they were guar-
anteed $5 for their participation in the study but that
they could earn bonus money in an amount determined
by their score in this final round. This procedure made
the subsequent overpayment more plausible to partici-
pants. Because theoretically everyone was earning differ-
ing amounts of money, the possibility of confusion on
the part of the person handing out the participant fees
was enhanced.
After completing the final round, all participants,
regardless of their score, were told that they had earned
a total of $6.25. They were also told that NORDCOM ran
many experiments on campus and that the company had
a small office in the building right behind the laboratory
where they disbursed participant fees for all of their
studies. Participants were then handed an official receipt
with $6.25 sloppily written on it to look somewhat like
$8.25 and a sheet telling them where to get both the
results of and a full debriefing regarding the experiment.
As they were leaving the laboratory on their way to the
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31
disbursements office, participants were told to hand the
receipt to the person in the office and that she would
give them $6.25. Thus, every participant heard the cor-
rect amount due to them twice, once at the end of the
final quiz round and once right as they were leaving to
get paid.
When participants entered the disbursements office,
the door closed behind them and they found a young
Caucasian woman about 30 years old (a confederate)
seated behind a desk facing away from the door and
toward a computer terminal. A second desk was placed
perpendicular to the desk with the computer and be-
tween the door and the confederate. As participants
approached this second desk, the woman turned toward
them. The confederate was polite and replied to ques-
tions but was not warm and did not initiate any conver-
sation. When the participant handed her the receipt, the
confederate reached into a drawer and pulled out an
envelope full of money. Counting aloud as she spread
the money out on the table surface, the confederate
placed a $5 bill, three singles, and a quarter, one at a
time, before the participant. (The use of a five and three
singles along with the confederate’s counting the money
out should have made it obvious to even the most inat-
tentive participants that they were not receiving $6.25.)
Without making eye contact, she placed the envelope
back into the drawer and immediately returned to her
typing at the computer. Participants who pointed out the
$2 error were allowed to keep the extra money under the
cover story that NORDCOM had just increased their
participant fees.
Condition 2: Antineutralization vaccine. This condition
was run using the same procedure as the baseline condi-
tion, with the following difference. The distraction task
given to participants between Rounds 2 and 3 of the
computer game did not involve evaluating a woman’s
rationalizations for why an inattentive man might ac-
tually harbor an interest in her. Instead, participants
were presented with a vignette about a woman working
for a computer company who, against company rules,
took a small amount (less than $5 worth) of office
supplies home for her personal use. Participants were
then asked to evaluate, one at a time, each of the
following five rationalizations the woman could use to
justify this behavior.
1. She simply could not resist the temptation to take a few
things when it was so easy.
2. Other employees of the company also secretly took
supplies home for their personal use from time to time.
3. The company that Carol worked for made so much
money last year that the cost of the materials that she
wasthinking oftakingwouldamountto aninfinitesimal
percentage of their profits and an even smaller propor-
tion of their budgeted operating expenses.
32 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
4. Carol’s company was guilty of bribing public officials to
get government contracts and then overcharging for
their work by fraudulently inflating their reported costs
by as much as 200%.
5. She needed them but did not want to buy them.
In particular, participants were asked if Carol’s rationali-
zation would really justify her action and to indicate on
a set of rating scales (a) how unethical it would be for
Carol to take the supplies given the justification she
offered; (b) how taking the office supplies home, given
her justification, would reflect on Carol’s moral charac-
ter; and (c) how tempted would they be themselves to
take office supplies home given the circumstances in
Carol’s justification.
Condition 3: Humanization of victim. This condition was
run exactly like the baseline condition with the following
differences. Instead of being sponsored by NORDCOM
INC., the study was portrayed as being the experi-
menter’s dissertation research. This entailed several
modifications to the stimulus materials. The NORD-
COM company logo was removed from everything par-
ticipants saw. The initial information sheet was also
modified. Although it still contained a geographical
description of Norway, the last paragraph was altered to
indicate that the study the participant was taking part in
was being financed entirely by the experimenter’s per-
sonal funds. The final change involved the cover story
used to explain to participants why the experimenter was
not giving out the money himself. Participants were told
that the study was not being run in the experimenter’s
usual lab and that his friend and office mate was helping
him by handing out his money for him.
Condition 4: Ask. This condition was run exactly like
the baseline with only one difference. After the confed-
erate counted out the $8.25 for the participants, she
looked up and asked them, “Is that right?”
Condition 5: Humanization of victim and ask. This con-
dition combined the humanize and ask manipulations.
Condition 6: Antineutralization vaccine and ask. This
condition combined the vaccine and ask manipulations.2
Contrary to the usual practice, participants were not
automatically debriefed on completion of the experi-
ment. Instead, a short memo was given to participants.
The memo invited them to call a day or so later if they
were interested in having a full and detailed explanation
of the experiment.
This procedure was adopted as a workable compro-
mise between two opposing ethical considerations. On
one hand, participants certainly have the right to be fully
informed regarding all experimental procedures; but on
the other, participation in the study would have the least
potential to cause stress and discomfort if there was no
debriefing. Participants who pointed out the overpay-
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ment, of course, would have nothing to feel upset about
regardless of whether they were debriefed. More impor-
tant, participants who kept the overpayment also should
not experience much if any discomfort if there was no
debriefing because it is assumed that they will have
conceptualized their act in terms with which they feel
comfortable. But, if those who kept the money were fully
debriefed, it would be much harder for them to view
their action in a benign manner. They would likely feel
that they had, in a sense, flunked some kind of moral
test. Thus, the debriefing was delayed so as not to involve
an embarrassing, face-to-face interaction and was made
optional. As it turned out, only nine participants re-
quested a debriefing. Two of the nine had kept the
overpayment.
Results
TEST OF HYPOTHESIS
The central hypothesis of the study was that the per-
centage of participants keeping the overpayment would
be influenced by altering the social environment in such
a way that participants would have either an easier or
harder time generating and accepting neutralizations
justifying the target behavior. In this regard, it was pre-
dicted that the baseline condition (Condition 1), having
no antineutralization manipulations, would lead to the
most unethical behavior followed by those conditions
(Conditions 2, 3, and 4) with a single manipulation. The
conditions (Conditions 5 and 6) with two manipulations
were predicted to generate the least number of partici-
pants failing to point out the overpayment. In testing
these predictions, the condition data were aggregated,
as indicated above, according to their number of anti-
neutralization manipulations.
These data were analyzed using a logistic regression
procedure to model the effects of participant gender
and number of antineutralization manipulations on re-
turning the participant fee overpayment. Logistic regres-
sion is the appropriate regression method to use when
an outcome variable is binary or dichotomous. It differs
from linear regression in the parametric model it em-
ploys and in its underlying assumptions, both of which
are more suitable for the nonnormal distribution pat-
tern of dichotomous data. Aside from these differences,
the methods employed in an analysis using logistic re-
gression follow the same general principles used in lin-
ear regression (Hosmer & Lemeshow, 1989).
Analyses indicated that females (M = 68.3%) were
more likely to point out the overpayment than were
males (M = 45.0%), p < .01, and that both the single (M =
51.7%) and paired antineutralization manipulations
(M = 82.5%) led to more ethical behavior on the part of
participants than none (M = 20.0%, p < .01 (see Table 1).
The gender by number of manipulations interaction
 Bersoff / MOTIVATED REASONING AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR 33

TABLE 1: Logistic Regression of Gender and Antineutralization agent’s moral character—overall M = –.98 on a scale
Manipulations on Returning the Overpayment ranging from +4 (extremely well) to –4 (extremely poorly).
Odds The overall means, when interpreted in reference to the
Variables β β/ SE Ratio original scales participants used in recording their atti-
tudes, lead to a general characterization of stealing office
Gender
Male –1.22*** –2.80 .29 supplies as being between a little and moderately unethi-
(Female = 0) cal and as reflecting a little poorly on one’s moral char-
Conditions acter. Given the minor amount of harm involved and the
Vaccine 1.28* 1.72 3.60 daily exposure people have in the media to acts of much
Humanize 1.50** 2.01 4.48
Ask 1.94*** 2.58 7.00
greater consequence, this seems like a reasonable char-
Single manipulations aggregated 1.57*** 2.45 4.81 acterization. The point of critical importance is that
Humanize/ask 3.00*** 3.62 20.11 people have not become so jaded that little indiscretions
Vaccine/ask 3.37*** 3.84 29.00 are now considered acceptable or morally neutral.
Dual manipulations aggregated 3.16*** 4.32 23.77 In terms of potential mediators of unethical behavior,
(Baseline = 0)
Constant –.89 –1.50 .41
the two questions of interest on the vaccine question-
naire were “Would Carol be justified in taking a small
NOTE: The odds ratio indicates the likelihood of returning the over- amount (less than $5 worth) of these supplies home for
payment in comparison to the base group. For example, in this analysis, personal use?” and “How tempted would you, yourself,
males were .29 times (or a little less than a third) as likely to return the
money as were females. be to take office supplies home for personal use?” Per-
*p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01. haps differing attitudes toward what justifies small acts
of theft or the temptation to indulge in such behavior
may have differentiated those who kept the money from
term did not yield a significant coefficient nor did it those who tried to return the overpayment. Justification
significantly enhance the fit of the model. A follow-up scores (overall M = .98) were calculated by giving partici-
regression using the single manipulation conditions as pants one point for each of the five rationalizations they
the comparison group further indicated that two ma- felt justified Carol’s taking the supplies. Temptation
nipulations were significantly more effective in reducing scores—overall M = 2.56 on a scale ranging from 0 (not
unethical behavior than one alone (β = 1.59, p < .01). at all) to 5 ( I would definitely take the supplies)—were

Analyses examining the effectiveness of the individual
conditions were also done. The percentage of partici-
pants who returned the overpayment by condition is
presented in Table 2. A logistic regression revealed that,
of the five experimental conditions, only the anti-
neutralization vaccine failed to reduce reliably keeping
the overpayment relative to the baseline condition, al-
though it did manifest a trend in that direction (see
Table 1). Follow-up logistic regressions further indicated
that no single manipulation alone was significantly more
effective than any other single manipulation. In addi-
tion, neither of the two manipulation combinations was
found to be significantly more effective than the other.
calculated by taking the mean of participants’ answers to
the temptation question across each of the five rationali-
zations. A logistic regression examining the relationship
between both of these variables and returning the over-
payment revealed that, whereas justification scores were
not significantly related to the outcome measure, self-
reported temptation was a reliable predictor such that
participants with higher temptation scores were less
likely to return the money (β = –.70, p < .05). It should
be noted, however, that the temptation effect did not
eliminate but rather coexisted with a significant vaccine
versus vaccine/ask condition effect (β = –2.57, p < .01).
Discussion

CONTROL ANALYSES
Several control analyses also were done. The re-
sponses of the 40 participants (20 men and 20 women)
who filled out the antineutralization vaccine question-
naire involving a woman stealing office supplies were
analyzed to get some indication of participants’ attitudes
toward an act similar in magnitude to keeping a $2
overpayment. In response to each of the five rationaliza-
tions presented, participants saw the act of taking the
office supplies as both unethical—overall M = –1.43 on
a scale ranging from –4 (extremely unethical) to +4 (ex-
tremely ethical)—and as reflecting negatively on the
The results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of
the experimental manipulations in reducing unethical
behavior. Specifically, significant increases in returning
the participant fee overpayment were found as the num-
ber of antineutralization manipulations increased from
none to one and again from one to two. Furthermore,
this manipulation effect was not mediated by any of the
individual difference variables measured.
Examination of the data for the six individual condi-
tions speaks to the integrity of the experimental design
and results. The high incidence of failing to point out
the overpayment across both genders in the baseline

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34 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
TABLE 2: Percentage of Participants Who Returned the Overpayment by Condition
Baseline Vaccine
Total Sample (N = 120) 20 45
Males only (n = 60) 10 30
Females only (n = 60) 30 60
condition indicates that the substance and focus of the
experiment was not obvious to participants, who most
likely would not have taken the money if they suspected
the true nature of the experiment. Similarly, the uni-
formly low incidence of unethical behavior in the two
dual manipulation conditions indicates that participants
were not acting mindlessly. If participants were not aware
of both the overpayment and that keeping the money
was a questionable or unacceptable act, then the percent-
age of participants failing to point out the extra money
would have been uniformly high across all conditions.
Although the results of this study are fully compatible
with and suggestive of a motivated cognition conception
of unethical behavior, the mechanism itself can only be
inferred from the data because participants’ thoughts
and judgments at the time of their deciding whether to
keep or return the money were not directly measured.
Thus, an alternative mechanism may have mediated the
influence of the experimental manipulations on the
participants’ behavior. In particular, an important, po-
tential alternative hypothesis is that the same situational
elements that made the act harder to neutralize also
made the act objectively more unethical. The pattern of
results, then, may simply have been a function of a
progressively greater amount of unethicality in the act of
keeping the money going from the baseline through the
single manipulation and finally to the dual-manipulation
conditions. Participants stole more in the baseline than
in the other conditions according to this line of reason-
ing, because it was less unethical to keep the money in
that context and the less unethical an action is the more
people are likely to perform it, all else being equal.
This explanation implies that unethical behavior
stems from a utilitarian-type decision procedure. Specifi-
cally, the implication is that people know full well that
what they are contemplating is wrong to some Degree X,
but they are willing to accept this insult to their self-image
in return for potential Gain Y, at least up to a point. This
point is where Gain Y is no longer seen as adequately
compensating for the self-esteem damage caused by
knowingly performing an act with an X level of immorality.
The neutralization and utilitarian decision concep-
tions of unethical behavior may appear to be similar in
that they both predict that a person is more likely to
commit an act, all else being the same, the less unethical
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Condition
Humanize Ask Humanize/Ask Vaccine/Ask
50 60 80 85
30 40 80 80
70 80 80 90
it seems to be, but these two conceptions are actually
radically different. Neutralization presumes a motivated
distortion or a biased analysis of a situation. For example,
in this experiment, it was assumed that underlying and
influencing participants’ judgments that keeping the
money was permissible was the wish or hope that the act
did not amount to stealing. If the act was not stealing,
then participants could keep the money without guilt or
self-recrimination.
The utilitarian decision conception does not involve
motivated cognition or the attendant bias and distortion.
It implies that people plainly recognize the immorality
inherent in the actions that they are considering but,
under certain circumstances, are willing to accept that
price to achieve a gain. The only judgment-influencing
motivation they are experiencing, if any, is to be accurate
in their assessments.
The key to adjudicating between these two competing
explanations for the Study 1 results is to remove partici-
pants’ motivation to see the act of keeping the overpay-
ment as ethical. Under the neutralization model, with-
out some incentive, participants should no longer
engage in a biased analysis of the situation. As a result,
they should see the act of keeping the money as equally
unethical across all six conditions. But under a utilitarian
decision model, removing the monetary motivation
should not change participants’ perceptions of the ethi-
cality of keeping the overpayment because their percep-
tions were not assumed to be originally biased by the
potential gain. As a consequence, participants should
continue to see the act of keeping the money as differ-
entially unethical across the conditions in a pattern
similar to that reflected in the behavioral outcome data.
Specifically, those conditions that led to the most partici-
pants keeping the money in Study 1 should also be the
ones in which participants evaluate the act as the least
unethical.
There are, of course, some important psychological
differences between acting within and commenting on
a moral situation (Saltzstein, 1994) aside from the ab-
sence of the impetus for motivated cognition. Thus, it
would be overly stringent to demand a correspondence
in the absolute levels of keeping the overpayment in
Study 1 and approval of such behavior on the part of an
equal number of participants simply reporting their
 Bersoff / MOTIVATED REASONING AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
moral perceptions. But if some sort of unbiased moral
interpretation of the act of keeping the money was
driving the results of Study 1, it is not unreasonable to
expect measures of moral judgment to manifest a data
pattern or shape approximating the pattern of those
Study 1 results. The standard method for measuring
moral attitudes and perceptions is getting people to
react to vignettes. A follow-up experiment based on this
logic was performed and is reported below.
STUDY 2
This study was a vignette version of the first study.
Because participants in this study were not in a position
to gain monetarily from their judgments, their responses
were assumed to represent an unbiased, normative
evaluation of the act of keeping the overpayment within
the context of each of the six conditions used in the
previous study.
Method
Ten males and 10 females were randomly assigned to
one of the six conditions used in Study 1. Participants
who were randomized into conditions involving the anti-
neutralization vaccine were first given the stealing office
supplies version of the rationalization questionnaire to
fill out while the remaining participants first completed
the baseline office crush version of the questionnaire.
After filling out the rationalization questionnaire, par-
ticipants were given a veridical, written description of
what Study 1 participants in the condition correspond-
ing to the one they were randomized into saw and
experienced. The description was prefaced with a para-
graph that stated that the events to be described actually
happened at the participant’s university last year. Partici-
pants were also told that the identity and gender of the
person involved would be concealed, although they were
told that person who disbursed the subject fees was
female. In all cases, the account ended with this phrase:
The subject “reached down, picked up all $8.25, and
walked out of the office.”
Participants were then asked a series of six questions.
First they were asked to answer yes or no as to whether the
person in the description was justified in failing to point
out the $2 overpayment. Next, participants were in-
structed to indicate on a set of rating scales (a) how
unethical it was to fail to point out the $2 overpayment—
ratings could range from –4 (extremely unethical) to +4
(extremely ethical) with a neutral midpoint; (b) how failing
to point out the $2 overpayment reflected on the per-
son’s moral character—ratings could range from +4 (ex-
tremely well) to –4 (extremely poorly) with a neutral midpoint;
(c) how tempted they themselves would be not to point
out the overpayment in this situation—ratings could
range from 0 (not at all) to +5 (I would definitely not point
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35
out the overpayment); and (d) how easily they could ration-
alize to themselves failing to point out an overpayment
in a situation like this—ratings could range from 0 (I
could not rationalize keeping the overpayment) to +5 (ex-
tremely). Those participants who indicated that they could
rationalize failing to point out the overpayment (i.e.,
participants who gave a nonzero response to the pre-
vious question) were asked to supply the two rationaliza-
tions that they would be most likely to use.
Results
As in Study 1, the condition data were aggregated
according to their number of antineutralization manipu-
lations. The participants’ dichotomous judgments of
whether the person in the vignette was justified in failing
to point out the overpayment were analyzed using a
logistic regression procedure. This analysis did not pro-
duce any significant results. Participants considered
keeping the overpayment to be equally unjustified across
all three antineutralization manipulation conditions
(M = 80.0%).
Consistent with the justification data, one-way ANO-
VAs performed on participants’ ethicality and moral
character ratings also failed to produce any significant
results. In general, participants rated keeping the money
as between a little and moderately unethical (M = –1.72)
and as reflecting a little poorly on one’s moral character
(M = –0.98). In addition, the temptation and the ease of
rationalization data were also nonsignificant. Partici-
pants, across conditions, saw keeping the money as be-
tween somewhat and moderately tempting (M = 2.42) and
as between somewhat and moderately easy to rationalize
(M = 2.38).
In terms of the specific rationalizations that partici-
pants claimed that they would be most likely to use, 60%
of the responses revolved around two issues. The first
(M = 36%) was that the loss was at least partially the
victim’s own fault (denial of responsibility), for example
“The woman counting out the money was careless,” “The
experimenter should have written the receipt more
clearly,” and “It is the company’s responsibility to make
sure that things like this don’t happen.” The second issue
(M = 24%) was that the $2 loss itself did not represent a
great deal of harm, especially for a large corporation
(denial of harm). Albeit in a somewhat post hoc fashion,
these data thus serve as an empirical justification for the
ask and humanize antineutralization manipulations
used in Study 1, because these were exactly the types of
rationalizations those manipulations were designed to
counter.
Discussion
The Study 2 evaluation data support a neutralization-
based approach over a utilitarian decision approach to
36 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
explaining the unethical behavior of the participants in
Study 1. Specifically, the results indicate that normative
perceptions of the act of keeping the $2 overpayment
most likely did not mediate participants’ behavior in
Study 1. The presence or absence of antineutralization
manipulations does not appear to have had any influ-
ence on the perceived justifiability of keeping the money.
In addition, there were no significant differences in
participants’ perceptions of how unethical or image
damaging keeping the money was as a function of the
Study 1 manipulations. Finally, there were absolutely no
discernable gender differences in this study, whereas
Study 1 yielded a clear main effect for gender. These
data, however, should not be construed as implying that
the unethicality of an act as a rule is independent of the
context in which it occurs. Rather, these results are
presented solely to support the claim that the specific
contextual manipulations used here did not signifi-
cantly affect the perceived ethicality of keeping the $2
overpayment.
The contexts created by the various conditions used
in Study 1 appear to have merely made potential neu-
tralizations more or less available. This underscores the
motivated aspect of neutralization-like thinking. The
Study 1 participants, having a $2 gain hanging in the
balance, were motivated to search for potential justifica-
tions and not motivated to question or critically evaluate
any argument they could concoct for why keeping the
overpayment was acceptable behavior (Bach, 1981;
Kunda, 1990). Thus, the more neutralizations made
available to them, the more likely they were to keep the
money. The Study 2 participants had nothing to gain as
a result of their evaluations of the act. As a consequence,
they were not motivated to seek neutralizations. This is
reflected in the fact that they saw failing to return the
overpayment as equally unjustified across all condi-
tions regardless of the relative availability of potential
neutralizations.
Although the ease of rationalization question data
also did not reflect the Study 1 pattern of results, it is still
possible that some form of neutralization or motivated
cognition was mediating participants’ behavior in the
previous study. Study 2 participants may simply have
been unaware of how the situational factors depicted
would have influenced their ability to rationalize had
they been in the actual situation (Nisbett & Bellows,
1977; Wilson & Nisbett, 1978). Alternatively, participants
may have interpreted the rationalization question, given
the context created by the previous questions, as asking
another version of “How wrong or bad do you think the
act is?”
Despite the indications that a utilitarian decision-
making approach is not the best perspective from which
to understand the results of Study 1, it would be un-
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founded to assume that people, at certain times, do not
weigh potential costs and benefits when making deci-
sions about engaging in unethical or criminal behavior
(Cornish & Clarke, 1986). Utilitarian-based reasoning
probably underlies, in part, the deterrence effect of
alarms and other antitheft measures that counterbal-
ance a potential gain with an increased likelihood of
being caught. But it appears that such reasoning plays
less of a role in decisions to commit everyday peccadil-
loes such as the one operationalized in Study 1, in which
the chance of detection is low and the potential gain
does not seem to be worth the potential self-image
damage.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
In Study 1, manipulations designed to affect the ac-
cessibility of neutralizing cognitions without systemati-
cally altering the experimental environment in terms of
(a) the presence of external pressure (e.g., obedience or
conformity demands); (b) the risk or penalty of being
caught; (c) the amount of money involved; or (d) the
characteristics of the participants (e.g., their need or
desire for money) were found to have a direct and
marked impact on the occurrence of unethical behavior.
The mechanism underlying their influence on behavior,
I argue, is that the manipulations disrupted participants’
neutralization-oriented motivated cognitions, thus mak-
ing it harder for participants to deceive themselves that
the act of keeping the overpayment was ethically accept-
able. Study 2 lent further support to this contention by
demonstrating that the Study 1 decreases in taking the
overpayment were unlikely to have been mediated by
objective increases in the magnitude of the moral breach
as a function of the contexts created by the particular
manipulations used.
In both between- and within-participant comparisons,
antistealing attitudes were not found to be reliable pre-
dictors of actual behavior. In Study 1, among those
participants whose attitudes toward small acts of theft
from a large company were measured, no significant
relationship between the attitudes expressed and sub-
sequent behavior was found. In Study 2, moral evalu-
ations of the specific act examined in Study 1 did not
reflect the pattern of behavioral results obtained in that
study. Viewed together, these findings along with pre-
vious work showing moral attitude-behavior discontinu-
ity (see, e.g., Hartshorne & May, 1928; Thoma & Rest,
1986; see also Blasi, 1980, for a general review), suggest
that measurements of moral attitudes may not be as
important to predicting behavior as is information re-
garding how those attitudes are applied to specific situ-
ations by agents acting within those situations.
Some researchers working in the area of attitudes and
behavior might disagree with this position, arguing that
 Bersoff / MOTIVATED REASONING AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
attitude-behavior discrepancies such as those found here
are simply due to measurement problems. In particular,
it could be asserted that the correspondence between
the context in which moral behavior and the context in
which moral attitudes were measured in both Studies 1
and 2 was not perfect (although Study 2 was somewhat
better in this regard) (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977) and that
this imperfect correspondence is what led to the insig-
nificant attitude-behavior relationships found. Although
this may be true at some level, it is also true that paper-
and-pencil attitude measures in general are incapable of
engendering all of the complex psychological reactions
attendant with actually being in a situation. As a conse-
quence, moral attitude surveys and vignette studies can
only supply limited insight into moral behavior. It is
unfortunate that such studies have traditionally been the
sine qua non of morality research.
This conclusion, I would note, differs from the more
extreme position that moral attitudes do not influence
behavior. Research has demonstrated that moral values
are related to behavior via their influence on intentions
(Harrison, 1995; Pomazal & Jaccard, 1976). But to the
extent that motivated cognition leads an agent to erro-
neously perceive that a particular moral attitude—for
example, stealing is wrong—is irrelevant to a given situ-
ation, that attitude simply will not be in a position to
influence intention and ultimately behavior (Zanna
& Fazio, 1982). It is likely, however, that some other
attitude—for example, it is okay to take something that
is not yours if no one is harmed—will be activated in such
situations and will, as a consequence, influence the
agent’s behavior.
Men pointed out the overpayment significantly less
frequently than did women. The implication of these
data is that women act unethically less frequently than
do men.3 This is not the first study to yield sex differences
in cheating and dishonesty behavior (see, e.g., Eisen,
1972; Ward, 1986). Such findings are not easily inter-
preted. The majority of moral reasoning research has
tended to find weak or nonexistent gender effects (see
reviews by Thomas, 1986; Walker, 1984). Consistent with
this trend, Study 2 also failed to uncover any gender
differences in moral perceptions. This null finding is
even more striking given that participants were asked to
evaluate the very act that yielded a significant gender-
based behavioral difference in Study 1. Such evidence
would seem to contra-indicate explanations of the pre-
sent gender findings based on differences in moral atti-
tudes or judgment.
In the past, sex differences in unethical behavior have
been explained using sex-role socialization theory
(Ward, 1986). This theory suggests that women are more
honest because they are socialized to obey rules and
norms, whereas men’s socialization is less stringent in
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37
this regard (Ward & Beck, 1990). Research also indicates
that men are bigger risk takers and more impulsive than
are women (MacDonald, 1988; Zuckerman, 1979). Ten-
dencies such as these, to deny or underestimate the
possible negative consequences of their actions and to
act without careful thought, may make men more likely
to engage in unethical behavior. Alternatively, some re-
search has indicated that women may possess a greater
empathy and sensitivity to the welfare and feelings of
others (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983). These predisposi-
tions may make women less likely to engage in unethical
behavior.
The precedent for gender differences in unethical
behavior aside, it is also possible that several aspects of
this study may have exaggerated or even given rise to the
gender effect found. In particular, the person making
the overpayment was female across all conditions. Per-
haps people are less likely to steal from someone of their
own sex. In addition, the protagonist in the antineutrali-
zation vaccine task was female. This may have made at
least the conditions involving the antineutralization vac-
cine more immediate to and thus effective with females.
Despite the high levels of unethical behavior found in
Study 1 among participants of both genders, I would
suggest that self-serving moral evaluations should not be
viewed as an inevitable consequence of any conflict be-
tween an individual’s selfish interest and the dictates of
his or her moral principles. The neutralizations that
serve as the basis of these biased evaluations will facilitate
unethical behavior only to the extent the neutralizer
believes, in good faith, that his or her justificatory rea-
soning is valid. Even people motivated to reach a particu-
lar conclusion still manifest an illusion of objectivity,
attempting to construct a justification for their actions
that would persuade a dispassionate observer (Kunda,
1990). The flaw inherent in neutralizations is not that
they appeal to principles without merit but rather that
they overextend the use of a valid justification into a
context or situation that is not recognized by society at
large as a valid application of such a justification (Sykes
& Matza, 1957). Neutralizations exploit the implicitly
sanctioned flexibility in the normative rules and customs
of a society (Williams, 1951). However, the less moral
ambiguity there is surrounding a situation, the less lati-
tude an agent has in negotiating reality in such a way as
to provide justification for an unethical action.
In addition, the Study 1 finding of a 17.5% rate of
failure to return the money in the dual-manipulation
conditions versus 80% in the baseline condition indi-
cates that the neutralization process and the resultant
unethical behavior are susceptible to moderately subtle
situational influences and are fairly easily disrupted. This
is important to note because a common response to
unethical behavior, at least among employees, is for
38 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
management to increase random monitoring and
searches (Crossen, 1993). The problem is that such
approaches to theft reduction entail many thorny ethi-
cal, legal, and morale issues. In contrast, the types of
manipulations used in this study can reduce unethical
behavior without the problems associated with coercive
approaches.
The motivated cognition view of unethical behavior
developed and tested here does not deny people’s sense
of themselves as being moral, honest, and as possessing
integrity. Nor does it deny the motivation people feel to
protect their self-image and to act in a prosocial manner.
It does, however, suggest that at least in situations involv-
ing relatively minor acts of social deviance, people com-
monly distort the moral implications of their desired
behavioral response and end up acting contrary to these
motivations. On the positive side, gaining a fuller under-
standing of the cognitions that facilitate unethical behav-
ior may suggest effective and generally applicable strate-
gies for reducing the acts of theft, cheating, and lying in
which people too often indulge.
NOTES
1. Using a foreign instead of a domestic company may have served
not only to dehumanize the potential victim of the $2 theft but also to
create an in-group/out-group situation in the minds of the partici-
pants. If this did occur, it would only serve to strengthen the manipu-
lation because out-group members are easier to depersonalize and thus
are more likely to be perceived as being less worthy of ethical treatment
(Tyler & Lind, 1990).
2. The antineutralization vaccine and the humanization of victim
manipulations were not combined because the vaccine questionnaire
involved stealing from a company, whereas the humanization manipu-
lation entailed making an individual and not a corporation the poten-
tial theft victim. Altering the vaccine to reflect this change in victim
would have substantially compromised the cross-condition compara-
bility of the vaccine manipulation. Keeping the vaccine the same would
have rendered it less similar to the specific situation the participant was
facing and, as a consequence, potentially less effective. This too would
have compromised cross-condition comparisons.
3. Visual inspection of the data would seem to indicate that gender
interacted with number of manipulations, but statistical analyses clearly
indicated gender to be a simple main effect. The small gender differ-
ences in the baseline and dual manipulation conditions were due most
likely to a floor and a ceiling effect respectively.
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Recieved December 8, 1996
Revision Accepted January 21, 1998