5.MEH_Behaviour_Ethics_1

UNIT 5: BEHAVIOURAL ETHICS:
CHALLENGES TO ETHICAL LIVING -1
11/14/2023
07/12/2024 1 1
07/12/2024 XLRI: Corporate Cases |www.BusinessEthics.in | ManagerialEthics@xlri.ac.in | 1/50
Behavioral Ethics: Challenges to Ethical
Living
• Examines some of the internal and external forces that can threaten our autonomy
as agents and undermine our ability to drive our lives as ethical beings
• Become aware of these pitfalls, become committed to avoiding them, and live
ethically as responsible agents. It will give students a taste of the complexity of
living ethically and show them the extent to which taking responsibility for our
lives is a central aspect not only of living ethically, but also, more broadly, living
lives that we will deem worthwhile.
• To realise how we use reason to do unreasonable (unethical) actions and justify
them to ourselves.
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Contents
1. Challenge of Living Ethically: Reason again Reason
2. Selective Attention
3. Good Samaritan Experiment
4. Psychological Distance & Moral Indifference
5. Conformity, Obedience, and the Bystander Effect
a. Conformity: Solomon Ash Experiment
b. Obedience versus Ethics: Milgram Experiment
c. Deindividualtion & Learned Helplessness: Stanford Prison Experiment
d. The Bystander Effect: John Darley and Bibb Latané
6. The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: Dan Ariely
a. Fudge Factor
b. What the Hell Effect
c. Confession: Fresh Beginning
7. JoHari Window
8. Conclusion: Lesson
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1. Challenge of Ethical Living: Reason
against Reason!
• At some level, we realize that we are doing wrong, but we tell
ourselves dissonance-reducing stories, or rationalizations that make it
seem as if our behaviour is not only acceptable, but even perhaps
heroic!
• Everyday criminals tend to find attenuating circumstances, that is,
excuses, for their crimes
• “I did it, but that is because forces that I have little or no control over,
such as upbringing and bad company, led me to do it.”
• Rationalise or justify our immoral behaviour
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1. Challenge of Living Ethically
• at a basic level we all seek to be ethical.
• Related to the concept of rationalization is the ‘Fudge Factor’, a term referring to the
extent to which one can cheat and still feel good about oneself because of the pull of
powerful countervailing desires
• we are not only ethical beings
• We are also rational, pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking, creative-storytelling, social,
status-concerned, self-loving, and driven by powerful desires
• rationality is typically a positive quality,
• it also allows for the possibility of rationalization, that is, reason brought to the
service of self-deception aimed at pain avoidance, particularly pain caused by the
conflict between the desire to be good and the fact that we have done or want to do
wrong
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1. Challenge of Living Ethically
• “So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables
one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do” -
Benjamin Franklin
• Creative storytelling – also generally considered a positive quality –
can lead us to form fantasies about ourselves that lead to unethical
action.
• We are social beings, indeed, caring beings. But our sociality can lead
us to join an unthinking mob. We care about status.
• our powerful passions can be both deeply rewarding and deeply
destructive.
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2. Selective Attention and Psychological
Distance
• Selective attention is not a mechanism we have full control over. It
operates largely in the background and does the job for us without our
knowledge, unless we make an effort to observe its operation.
• Daniel Simons
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2. Selective Attention and Psychological
Distance
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtKt8YF7dgQ
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfRSassEzoU
• famous Good Samaritan Experiment shows that we may miss many ethically
salient things that present themselves to us because we are in too much of a rush
• theology students (seminarians)
• fact, without selective attention we would probably not be able to get on with the
actual business of living our lives. Therefore, shortcuts are required.
• these shortcuts are known as heuristics - rules of thumb that guide our lives. They
normally serve us well
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3. Good Samaritan Expt
• The Good Samaritan experiment was conducted by John Darley and
Daniel Batson in 1973 to explore factors influencing people's
willingness to help others in need.
• They set up a scenario involving distressed individuals and seminary
students rushing to give presentations.
• The experiment revealed that students who were in a hurry were less
likely to help the distressed person, regardless of their level of
religious conviction or altruistic principles.
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3. Good Samaritan Expt
• The results emphasized the impact of situational pressures on altruistic
behavior and challenged common beliefs about natural propensities
for helping.
• The experiment's legacy led to further research on altruism, empathy,
and contextual factors. It underscored the importance of designing
environments that encourage compassion and highlighted the need to
consider context when evaluating human behavior.
• Despite some criticism for oversimplification, the Good Samaritan
experiment has significantly contributed to our understanding of
selfless actions and the influence of context on altruism.
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3. Good Samaritan Law
• The Good Samaritan Law protects individuals who voluntarily and without
any expectation of reward or duty of care come forward to help someone in
need after an accident or medical emergency.
• This law ensures that these Good Samaritans cannot be held liable for any
civil or criminal action resulting from their efforts to provide emergency
medical or non-medical assistance. In India, the fear of legal consequences
and bureaucratic procedures has discouraged people from helping accident
victims, leading to many avoidable deaths.
• In response to this, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was submitted to the
Supreme Court to safeguard those who assist the injured. The Good Samaritan
Law aims to encourage more bystanders to provide timely aid to accident
victims and potentially save lives.
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4. Psychological Distance
• Psychological distance and moral indifference are two interconnected concepts
that shed light on how individuals' perception of distance, whether temporal,
spatial, social, or hypothetical, can influence their moral judgments and
behavior.
• Psychological distance refers to the perceived proximity or remoteness of a
particular situation, event, or person from the individual's own self. It
encompasses both spatial distance (physical proximity) and temporal
distance (time-related aspects), as well as social distance (relationship or
familiarity) and hypothetical distance (likelihood or probability).
• When an event or person is psychologically distant, individuals may view it as
less relevant or less emotionally impactful, leading to distinct cognitive and
emotional responses.
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4. Moral Indifference
• Moral indifference, on the other hand, refers to the tendency of individuals to
show apathy or reduced concern for moral issues or ethical dilemmas when they
perceive psychological distance. In such cases, individuals may feel less
responsible for taking moral actions or helping others in need, as they perceive
the situation as less connected to their own lives or immediate concerns.
• Understanding the relationship between psychological distance and moral
indifference is essential for promoting prosocial behavior and ethical decision-
making. By recognizing how perceptions of distance can impact moral
judgments, individuals and policymakers can design interventions and ethical
frameworks that encourage empathy, responsibility, and a sense of moral duty
even in psychologically distant situations. Additionally, cultivating awareness of
these biases can help people overcome moral indifference and foster a more
compassionate and ethical society.
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4. Ethical Challenges of Drone Warfare
• Eye in the Sky (www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392/)
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5. Conformity, Obedience, and the Bystander
Effect
• Solomon Asch
• Stanley Milgram
• Philip Zimbardo: Stanford Prison Experiment
• John Darley and Bibb Latané
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5a. Conformity: Solomon Ash Experiment
(from BE)
• Solomon Asch's classic experiment on social influence and conformity conducted
in 1951. In the experiment, college students were asked to identify lines of the
same length while surrounded by confederates who gave incorrect answers.
• Despite knowing the correct responses, many participants conformed to the
group's wrong answers due to peer pressure.
• The concept of social influence and conformity has contemporary relevance, as
similar results have been replicated in various studies.
• Factors like the number of experimenters, age, and cultural background influence
the level of conformity. Collectivist societies tend to exhibit higher levels of
conformity compared to individualistic societies.
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• It highlights the importance of understanding conformity in decision-
making processes and the potential negative consequences of blind
obedience to authority. Obedience can lead individuals to violate
moral norms and engage in harmful actions.
• In the context of India and other collectivist nations, the study of
conformity can help individuals assert their autonomy and balance the
need for harmony in society with their individuality and strengths.
• Understanding conformity can lead to a more meaningful and
fulfilling life for both individuals and society as a whole.
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• Normative conformity
• Informational conformity
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5 b. Milgram Experiment: Obedience versus
Ethics
• Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiment, conducted in the
1960s, which aimed to understand why ordinary individuals followed
orders to administer potentially harmful electric shocks to others.
• The experiment involved participants serving
as teachers who believed they were
administering memory tests and learners who
were actually confederates of the
experimenter.
• The experimenter instructed the teachers to
administer increasing electric shocks to the
learners for incorrect answers.
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Ethics
• Despite knowing the shocks were harmful and hearing the learners'
protests, 65% of the participants continued to administer shocks up to
the maximum voltage of 450 volts, highlighting the powerful impact
of obedience to authority figures.
• Milgram conducted various iterations of the experiment, finding that
proximity to the learner, physical contact required for administering
shocks, and the refusal of other instructors influenced obedience rates.
The study generated significant debate about its ethics, as it caused
tension and distress in participants.
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Ethics
• We acknowledge the limitations of the study and its applicability to
historical events like the Holocaust. Nevertheless, it emphasizes that our
social environment has a significant influence on our behavior, and
obedience and conformity can lead individuals to act in unexpected ways.
• Despite the ethical concerns, Milgram's experiment contributed to the
development of protocols to safeguard participants in research studies. It
also highlighted the importance of individual factors like compassion and
ethics in determining whether people comply with authority or resist.
• In conclusion, our actions are influenced by our social surroundings, and
understanding obedience and conformity can help us navigate the
complexities of human behavior in social setting
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5 b. Milgram Experiment: Obedience Versus
EthicsConformity & Obedience: Extreme position
• people do not really have characters.
• If circumstances play such a decisive role in affecting the ways we behave, John
W Doris argues, then it is not character that motivates people to act, but
circumstances.
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5.c Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Landmark Study
• Objective: Investigate the causes of brutality in American prisons

(1971)
• Dispositional vs. Situational factors: Understanding if brutality is
related to personality or the prison environment
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Experiment Setup
• Mock prison at Stanford University's psychology building basement
• Participant selection: Careful screening for psychological stability
• Random assignment: Participants became either prisoners or guards
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Prisoner and Guard Behavior
• Early role adoption: Guards assert authority rapidly
• Harassment and control: Use of whistles, counts, and physical
punishment
• Prisoner rebellion: Removal of caps, numbers, and barricading
• Catholic priest: Not very helpful
• Guard response: Deployment of force and solitary confinement
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5.c Stanford Prison Experiment: Key Insights
• Findings: People readily conform to assigned social roles
• Influence of the situation: The prison environment played a significant
role
• Explanatory processes: DEINDIVIDUATION and Learned
Helplessness
• Surprising behavior: Many participants were shocked by their actions
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Ethical Considerations and Conclusion
• Such studies not permitted today (Ethics Committees)
• Ethical concerns: Controversies surrounding the experiment
• Termination: The experiment was halted after six days due to
emotional breakdowns and excessive aggression
• Final thoughts: Zimbardo's realization of the blurred roles and
profound impact of the situation on human behavior
• “It wasn’t until much later that I realized how far into my prison role I was at that point — that I was thinking
like a prison superintendent rather than a research psychologist.“
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5 d. The Bystander Effect
• Also known as bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that explains
why individuals are less likely to assist in emergencies when other bystanders
are present.
• The phenomenon was first studied in the 1960s and 1970s and gained
attention through the tragic case of Kitty Genovese, NY, where numerous
neighbors witnessed her being attacked but did not intervene.
• John Darley and Bibb Latané developed a five-stage model to explain why
bystanders sometimes offer assistance and sometimes do not. These stages
include observing the situation, classifying it as an emergency, evaluating
personal responsibility, determining the optimal way to help, and actually
providing assistance. The model suggests that any stage can be hindered,
leading to a lack of assistance.
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5d. The Bystander Effect
• These psychological processes contribute to
the bystander effect. Diffusion of responsibility
occurs when individuals feel less responsible
to help because the duty is shared among many
bystanders.
• Evaluation apprehension arises from the fear of being judged or evaluated by others
while acting in public. Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people base their actions
on the reactions of others, even if those reactions are based on false beliefs or
uncertainties.
• The bystander effect highlights the importance of understanding the social dynamics
and psychological processes that influence behavior in emergencies. By recognizing
these factors, interventions can be designed to encourage bystanders to offer
assistance and break the bystander effect, ultimately leading to a more helpful and
compassionate society.
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6. The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Dan
Ariely (2012)
• The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Dan Ariely (2012) identifies a
dissonance between wanting to be good and wanting to have things that
we desire.
• This dissonance accounts for the fact that very few people will become
hardened crooks. It also accounts for the fact that many of us are little
cheaters,
• In other words, dishonesty is everywhere but it is almost always kept
within bounds. He also explains why in some cases small cheaters become
big ones, why a series of small temptations motivate some to switch over
and become big cheaters, to give in to temptation.
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Ariely
• In such cases the “solution” to the dissonance-producing
competition between the desire to look ethical in our own eyes
and to get what we want is found in the rationalization that the
good thing from the moral point of view coincides with our
need to satisfy a desire by illicit means.
• Ariely suggests that in order to diminish crime we need to
change incentive structures, to create social conditions where
dissonance-producing conflicts of interest are minimized, thus
helping to neutralize the effect of our rationalizing tendencies
• taking responsibility for our lives is central to being ethical.
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Ariely
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wmrzU5enbU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyHLdpma3nQ
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Ariely
• The fact that we like to look good in our own eyes is a positive thing. It
highlights just how important ethics is to us and it tends to limit bad behaviour
to some extent. It can also, however, become contaminated by our need to
rationalize, which protects us from the psychological unease.
• taking responsibility for our lives is central to being ethical. Not to take
responsibility amounts to letting internal and external mechanisms drive our
lives to an unacceptable degree, as when one is led by one’s group to commit
unspeakable acts perhaps only later to realize the extent to which one has
betrayed one’s own most deeply held values by letting the natural inclination to
conform rule supreme.
• extent to which (minor) ethical failures are common and the extent to which our
ability to take responsibility for our lives is diminished by ethical failures of the
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6a. Fudge Factor
• Fudge Factor tells us, the cost of stealing a little and thinking of
ourselves as good honest people is that we end up distorting the lenses
through which we see the world and, perhaps most importantly,
ourselves.
• The term "fudge factor" refers to the act of intentionally manipulating
or adjusting data or results A LITTLE to achieve a desired outcome or
to hide undesirable information. It is a form of unethical behavior in
research, data analysis, or decision-making, as it involves distorting
information to misrepresent the truth or gain an advantage.
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6b. What the Hell Effect
• The What the Hell Effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals, after
deviating from their intended goal or desired behavior, give in to further temptation or
undesirable actions with the reasoning that they have already "blown it" or failed. In other
words, once they experience a setback or lapse in their original plan, they become more lenient
with themselves, allowing more indulgence in negative behaviors.
• For example, someone who is on a strict diet and eats a piece of cake may experience the What
the Hell Effect and decide to continue indulging in unhealthy foods for the rest of the day since
they believe they have already "ruined" their diet. The phenomenon is rooted in the idea of self-
licensing, where a single act of perceived virtue or self-control leads to a decrease in subsequent
restraint.
• The What the Hell Effect can be detrimental to achieving long-term goals and maintaining self-
discipline. Recognizing this cognitive bias can help individuals be more aware of their reactions
to setbacks and avoid falling into a pattern of self-sabotage. Understanding and managing this
effect can contribute to better decision-making and maintaining progress towards desired
outcomes.
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6b. What the Hell Effect
• What is the “what the hell” effect and how does it work? (
https://medium.com/@richardobenjr/have-you-fallen-victim-to-the-
what-the-hell-effect-39d47c97df98
)
• The competition is between a prudential rather than ethical “ought”
(avoid eating cake either because it is not yours or because it is not
good for you, or for some other reason) and the powerful desire to
eat mouth-watering cake in abundance.
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6c. Confession: Fresh Beginning
• What we find in our experiments is that once we start thinking of ourselves as polluted, there is
not much incentive to behave well, and the trip down the slippery slope is likely. This is the bad
news.
• The good news is that in such cases, confession, where we articulate what we have done wrong,
is an incredibly effective mechanism for resetting our moral compass.
• Importing this religious practice into civic life was effective in the Truth and Reconciliation Act
in South Africa, where acknowledging the many abuses and violations of the apartheid
government allowed the South Africans to forgive past sins, and start fresh.
[https://danariely.com/tag/the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty/]
• What does Ariely say about the Catholic confession and why it may work to
diminish dishonesty?
• Why do we tend to steal; but only a little?
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6c. Confession
• Confide…
• Peers…
• Share the most personal/intimate with
• Friend
• Senior (“The wise sage”)
• With your own ELDER self [Illeism]
• Professional counsellor/psychiatrist
• A few SECRETS
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Contents
c. The Bystander Effect: John Darley and Bibb Latané
a. Fudge Factor
7. JoHari Window
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7. JoHari Window
• American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed this
model in 1955. The idea was derived as the upshot of the group
dynamics in University of California and was later improved by Joseph
Luft. The name ‘Johari’ came from joining their first two names. This
model is also denoted as feedback/disclosure model of self-
awareness.
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7. Johari Window
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Open Area Blind Area
UNKNOWABLE Area
Hidden Area Unknown Area

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7. Johari Window
• Dark matter
• Gödel’s Incomplete Theorems

• https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-complex-truth-about-junk-dna-20210901/#:~:text=The
%2098%25%20of%20the%20human,complicated%20than%20that%20name%20implies.
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Contents
c. Deindividualtion & Learned Helplessness: Stanford Prison Experiment
d. The Bystander Effect: John Darley and Bibb Latané
a. Fudge Factor
7. JoHari Window
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8. Conclusion: Lessons
• We use reason to justify our immoral acts and feel good about them
• We lie to ourselves and love to do it
• We want to think that we are good, but some fudging and dishonesty
are tolerated
• So we are never 100% honest or dishonest!
• We are to a large extent shaped by situation: Still are we Really free?
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8. Conclusion: Are we REALLY free?
• Free moral agents?
• Determined
• Psychologically (S Freud), Sociologically (BF Skinner), Theologically
(Calvin), Politically (USSR), Neurologically?
• Conditioned vs determined
• Not Free collapse of social/legal/cultural framework
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8. Conclusion: Lessons
• Good or/and bad
• Reason to justify
• We cheat, a little
• Still we feel good
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UNIT 5: BEHAVIOURAL ETHICS:
CHALLENGES TO ETHICAL LIVING -1
Thank You!
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UNIT 5: BEHAVIOURAL ETHICS:

CHALLENGES TO ETHICAL LIVING -1

• Objective: Investigate the causes of brutality in American prisons

Hidden Area Unknown Area

• Gödel’s Incomplete Theorems

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