IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v123y2014i2p138-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Just think about it”? Cognitive complexity and moral choice

Author

Listed:
  • Moore, Celia
  • Tenbrunsel, Ann E.

Abstract

In this paper, we question the simplicity of the common prescription that more thinking leads to better moral choices. In three studies, we discover that the relationship between how complexly one reasons before making a decision with moral consequences is related to the outcome of that decision in a curvilinear way. Using two different moral decisions and both measuring and manipulating the level of cognitive complexity employed by the decision maker, we find that decisions made after reasoning with low and high levels of cognitive complexity are less moral than those made after reasoning at moderate levels of complexity. These results suggest that the best moral decisions are those that have been reasoned through “just enough”. Further, and at least as important, they illustrate the need to expand our study of ethical behavior beyond simple effects, and to gain a deeper understanding of the thought processes of individuals faced with moral choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Moore, Celia & Tenbrunsel, Ann E., 2014. "“Just think about it”? Cognitive complexity and moral choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 138-149.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:123:y:2014:i:2:p:138-149
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597813000897
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicole Ruedy & Maurice Schweitzer, 2010. "In the Moment: The Effect of Mindfulness on Ethical Decision Making," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 73-87, September.
    2. Eric Luis Uhlmann & Geoffrey Cohen, 2005. "Constructed Criteria. Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination," Post-Print hal-00516601, HAL.
    3. Paharia, Neeru & Vohs, Kathleen D. & Deshpandé, Rohit, 2013. "Sweatshop labor is wrong unless the shoes are cute: Cognition can both help and hurt moral motivated reasoning," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 81-88.
    4. David Jones, 2009. "A Novel Approach to Business Ethics Training: Improving Moral Reasoning in Just a Few Weeks," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(2), pages 367-379, August.
    5. Boris Groysberg & Jeffrey T. Polzer & Hillary Anger Elfenbein, 2011. "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High-Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 722-737, June.
    6. Kopelman, Shirli, 2009. "The effect of culture and power on cooperation in commons dilemmas: Implications for global resource management," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 153-163, January.
    7. Small, Deborah A. & Loewenstein, George & Slovic, Paul, 2007. "Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 143-153, March.
    8. Bowie, Norman E., 1991. "Challenging the Egoistic Paradigm," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Garagnani, Michele, 2020. "The cognitive foundations of cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 71-85.
    2. George, Jennifer M. & Dane, Erik, 2016. "Affect, emotion, and decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 47-55.
    3. Yip, Jeremy A. & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2016. "Mad and misleading: Incidental anger promotes deception," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 207-217.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pettit, Nathan C. & Doyle, Sarah P. & Lount, Robert B. & To, Christopher, 2016. "Cheating to get ahead or to avoid falling behind? The effect of potential negative versus positive status change on unethical behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 172-183.
    2. Lucius Caviola & Nadira Faulmüller & Jim. A. C. Everett & Julian Savulescu & Guy Kahane, 2014. "The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(4), pages 303-315, July.
    3. Sylvie Thoron, 2016. "Morality Beyond Social Preferences: Smithian Sympathy, Social Neuroscience and the Nature of Social Consciousness [La moralité au delà des préférences sociales. La sympathie Smithienne, les neurosc," Post-Print hal-01645043, HAL.
    4. Chris Hydock & Neeru Paharia & T. J. Weber, 2019. "The Consumer Response to Corporate Political Advocacy: a Review and Future Directions," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 6(3), pages 76-83, December.
    5. Chavanne, David & McCabe, Kevin & Paganelli, Maria Pia, 2011. "Whose money is it anyway? Ingroups and distributive behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 31-39, January.
    6. DeMarree, Kenneth G. & Briñol, Pablo & Petty, Richard E., 2014. "The effects of power on prosocial outcomes: A self-validation analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 20-30.
    7. Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2020. "Moral judgment of environmental harm caused by a single versus multiple wrongdoers: A survey experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    8. Nicole M Lindner & Alexander Graser & Brian A Nosek, 2014. "Age-Based Hiring Discrimination as a Function of Equity Norms and Self-Perceived Objectivity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(1), pages 1-6, January.
    9. Ian Maitland & Mitsuhiro Umezu, 2006. "An Evaluation of Japan's Stakeholder Capitalism," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 22(Spring 20), pages 131-164.
    10. Rojhat Avsar, 2021. "Rational Emotions: An Evolutionary Perspective," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 297-314, July.
    11. Helena Fornwagner & Oliver P. Hauser, 2022. "Climate Action for (My) Children," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 81(1), pages 95-130, January.
    12. Barron, Kai & Ditlmann, Ruth & Gehrig, Stefan & Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian, 2020. "Explicit and implicit belief-based gender discrimination: A hiring experiment," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-306, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. Youchung Kwon & Bo Kyung Kim, 2024. "When we unite, not divide: status homophily, group average status, and group performance in the Korean film industry," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(1), pages 9-31, February.
    14. Liwen Wang & Jin Jason Lu & Kevin Zhou, 2023. "Technological Capability Strength/Asymmetry and Supply Chain Process Innovation: The Contingent Roles of Institutional Environments in China," Post-Print hal-03954124, HAL.
    15. Alan C. Logan & Susan H. Berman & Richard B. Scott & Brian M. Berman & Susan L. Prescott, 2021. "Wise Ancestors, Good Ancestors: Why Mindfulness Matters in the Promotion of Planetary Health," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-14, October.
    16. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2016. "Social responsibility, human morality and public policy," Discussion Papers in Economics 16/20, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    17. Jasper Brinkerink, 2023. "When Shooting for the Stars Becomes Aiming for Asterisks: P-Hacking in Family Business Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 304-343, March.
    18. Wilhelm, William J. & Weber, Peter & Douglas, Kacey & Siepermann, Markus & Abuhamdieh, Ayman, 2021. "Moral reasoning and anti-immigrant bias: Experimental evidence from university students in Germany and the United States," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    19. Chang, Chia-Chi & Chen, Po-Yu, 2019. "Which maximizes donations: Charitable giving as an incentive or incentives for charitable giving?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 65-75.
    20. Moore, Alexander K. & Lewis, Joshua & Levine, Emma E. & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2023. "Benevolent friends and high integrity leaders: How preferences for benevolence and integrity change across relationships," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:123:y:2014:i:2:p:138-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.