{"id":157,"date":"2013-12-19T12:17:49","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T11:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/?p=157"},"modified":"2015-04-08T16:50:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T15:50:15","slug":"why-good-people-do-bad-things-and-what-we-can-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/2013\/12\/19\/why-good-people-do-bad-things-and-what-we-can-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Good People Do Bad Things and What We Can Do About It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Crowd,<\/a>
Crowd, by James Cridland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We can agree that people desire \u2013 in general \u2013 to act in an ethical manner and see themselves as ethical people. And there is general agreement also on values that matter to most people across different cultures: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom and transcendence.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, there are many situations in which good people act against their values<\/b><\/h3>\n

A good example of this is an experiment inspired by the biblical story of the Good Samaritan and conducted with seminary students as subjects (Darley, J.M., and Batson, C.D.: \u201cFrom Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of Situational Dispositional Variables in Helping Behaviour\u201d, JPSP, 1973, 27, 100-108).\u00a0 The students were on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan and came across someone who had been mugged. The amount of \u201churriedness\u201d induced in the subjects had a major impact on their helping behaviour. Thus, overall, 40% of the seminary students offered some help to the victim. But, the percentage rose to 63% for those in low hurry and to a 45% for those in medium hurry. But it decreased to a 10% for those in high hurry.<\/p>\n

What does this study tell us about ethical behaviour in today\u2019s corporate world?<\/p>\n

As individuals, we think that we always act in a rational way. But research demonstrates that this is not always so<\/b><\/h3>\n

The traditional view would say that when we face an ethical situation, we check our values, judge the situation in a rational way and, following our values, take action. But the Good Samaritan experiment demonstrates that on many occasions even people with the best standards may act different than expected. So on many occasions we may act against our values.<\/p>\n

Why is this the case?\u00a0 Over the last several years, we have witnessed how ethics has started leveraging other disciplines like psychology.\u00a0 In their book Blind Spots<\/i> (translated into Spanish as Puntos Ciegos<\/i>), experts like Bazerman and Tenbrunsel have started to talk about what is called Behavioural Ethics, an approach that encompasses concepts like \u201cethical fading\u201d \u2013 losing the ethical angle of a given problem \u2013 or being \u201cethically bounded,\u201d i.e., having a limited ethical perception.<\/p>\n

With the help of psychology and approaches such as those outlined in Blind Spots<\/i>, what might be some of the situations in which good people find themselves acting unethically?<\/p>\n

1. In some situations we may not perceive a question or a problem as having an ethical dimension<\/b>. In our recent history we have seen how many employees of banks sold assets – preferred shares – to people. Did they all<\/i> know the inherent risks of these assets? Or did they assume that as their superiors had approved the sale, everything was ok? Or were some of them that sold these for their families so focused on meeting their objectives that they neglected to consider anything else? Perhaps there are yet other reasons for these blind spots.<\/p>\n

This case is very controversial and painful for many families, but the point is that maybe some people acted wrongly without really noticing.<\/p>\n

2. We may act unconsciously<\/b>, in an automated manner and based upon preconceptions or prejudices in other situations. Some experiments have demonstrated that we may act against our deepest beliefs. Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University conducted an experiment in which black people demonstrated unconscious prejudices against people of their same race. In this experiment, both black and white people unconsciously related black to bad and white to good.<\/p>\n

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