Stranger Danger: When and Why Consumer Dyads Behave Less Ethically Than Individuals

While joint ethical violations are fairly common in the marketplace and in workplace, sports-team, and academic settings, little research has studied such collaborative wrongdoings. This work compares the joint ethical decisions of pairs of people (i.e., dyads) to those of individual decision makers. Four experiments demonstrate that dyads in which the partners do not share a social bond with each other behave less ethically than individuals do. The authors propose that this effect occurs because joint ethical violations offer a means to socially bond with others. Consistent with this theory, they demonstrate that the dyads’ subethicality relative to individuals is attenuated (1) if the dyad partners establish rapport prior to the joint decision making, and (2) in decision-making contexts in which social bonding goals are less active—namely, making a decision with an out-group versus in-group member. Taken together, this research provides novel theoretical insights into the social aspects of unethical behavior, offers suggestions to improve ethicality in joint decisions, and raises important questions for future research.