IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/08-080.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments

Author

Listed:
  • Francesca Gino

    (Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University)

  • Don A. Moore

    (Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University)

  • Max H. Bazerman

    (Harvard Business School, Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit)

Abstract

We present six studies demonstrating that outcome information biases ethical judgments of others' ethically-questionable behaviors. In particular, we show that the same behaviors produce more ethical condemnation when they happen to produce bad rather than good outcomes, even if the outcomes are determined by chance. Our studies show that individuals judge behaviors as less ethical, more blameworthy, and punish them more harshly, when such behaviors led to undesirable consequences, even if they saw those behaviors as acceptable before they knew its consequences. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that a rational, analytic mindset can override the effects of one's intuitions in ethical judgments. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesca Gino & Don A. Moore & Max H. Bazerman, 2008. "No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments," Harvard Business School Working Papers 08-080, Harvard Business School, revised Apr 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:08-080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-080.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hershey, John C. & Baron, Jonathan, 1992. "Judgment by outcomes: When is it justified?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 89-93, October.
    2. Camerer, Colin & Loewenstein, George & Weber, Martin, 1989. "The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1232-1254, October.
    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. Savani, Krishna & King, Dan, 2015. "Perceiving outcomes as determined by external forces: The role of event construal in attenuating the outcome bias," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 136-146.
    2. Cubitt, Robin P. & Drouvelis, Michalis & Gächter, Simon & Kabalin, Ruslan, 2011. "Moral judgments in social dilemmas: How bad is free riding?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 253-264.
    3. Cubitt, Robin P. & Drouvelis, Michalis & Gächter, Simon & Kabalin, Ruslan, 2011. "Moral judgments in social dilemmas: How bad is free riding?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 253-264.
    4. Nils Köbis & Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan, 2021. "Bad machines corrupt good morals," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 679-685, June.
    5. Helzer, Erik G. & Rosenzweig, Emily, 2020. "Examining the role of harm-to-others in lay perceptions of greed," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 106-114.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:8:y:2013:i:2:p:161-173 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Oliver Merz & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2021. "Underestimating randomness: Outcome bias in betting exchange markets," Working Papers 390, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    8. Kausel, Edgar E. & Ventura, Santiago & Rodríguez, Arturo, 2019. "Outcome bias in subjective ratings of performance: Evidence from the (football) field," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    9. Philippe P. F. M. van de Calseyde & Gideon Keren & Marcel Zeelenberg, 2013. "The insured victim effect: When and why compensating harm decreases punishment recommendations," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 8(2), pages 161-173, March.
    10. Robin Maialeh, 2019. "Generalization of results and neoclassical rationality: unresolved controversies of behavioural economics methodology," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1743-1761, July.
    11. Silver, Ike & Silverman, Jackie, 2022. "Doing good for (maybe) nothing: How reward uncertainty shapes observer responses to prosocial behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    12. Ilaria Castelli & Davide Massaro & Cristina Bicchieri & Alex Chavez & Antonella Marchetti, 2014. "Fairness Norms and Theory of Mind in an Ultimatum Game: Judgments, Offers, and Decisions in School-Aged Children," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-10, August.
    13. Justin W Martin & Fiery Cushman, 2015. "To Punish or to Leave: Distinct Cognitive Processes Underlie Partner Control and Partner Choice Behaviors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.
    14. Brownback, Andy & Kuhn, Michael A., 2019. "Understanding outcome bias," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 342-360.
    15. Gino, Francesca & Shu, Lisa L. & Bazerman, Max H., 2010. "Nameless + harmless = blameless: When seemingly irrelevant factors influence judgment of (un)ethical behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 93-101, March.

    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. Aman, Hiroyuki & Motonishi, Taizo & Ogawa, Kazuhito & Omori, Kozo, 2024. "The effect of financial literacy on long-term recognition and short-term trade in mutual funds: Evidence from Japan," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PB), pages 762-783.
    2. David Danz & Dorothea Kübler & Lydia Mechtenberg & Julia Schmid, 2015. "On the Failure of Hindsight-Biased Principals to Delegate Optimally," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1938-1958, August.
    3. Rachel A Ryskin & Sarah Brown-Schmidt, 2014. "Do Adults Show a Curse of Knowledge in False-Belief Reasoning? A Robust Estimate of the True Effect Size," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-8, March.
    4. Dean A. Shepherd & Jeffery S. Mcmullen & William Ocasio, 2017. "Is that an opportunity? An attention model of top managers' opportunity beliefs for strategic action," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 626-644, March.
    5. Hoffmann, Robert & Chesney, Thomas & Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Kock, Florian & Larner, Jeremy, 2020. "Demonstrability, difficulty and persuasion: An experimental study of advice taking," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    6. Cheng, Ing-Haw & Hsiaw, Alice, 2022. "Distrust in experts and the origins of disagreement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    7. Edward B. Royzman & Kwanwoo Kim & Robert F. Leeman, 2015. "The curious tale of Julie and Mark: Unraveling the moral dumbfounding effect," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(4), pages 296-313, July.
    8. Da Costa, Newton & Goulart, Marco & Cupertino, Cesar & Macedo, Jurandir & Da Silva, Sergio, 2013. "The disposition effect and investor experience," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1669-1675.
    9. Weber, Martin & Langer, Thomas, 2003. "Does Binding of Feedback Influence Myopic Loss Aversion? An Experimental Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 4084, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Theo Offerman & Joep Sonnemans, 2004. "What’s Causing Overreaction? An Experimental Investigation of Recency and the Hot‐hand Effect," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 533-554, October.
    11. Les Coleman & Adi Schnytzer, 2008. "Shorting the Bear: A Test of Anecdotal Evidence of Insider Trading in Early Stages of the Sub-Prime Market Crisis," Journal of Prediction Markets, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 2(3), pages 61-69, December.
    12. Berg, Nathan & Biele, Guido & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2010. "Does consistency predict accuracy of beliefs?: Economists surveyed about PSA," MPRA Paper 26590, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Angelo Petralia, 2024. "Harmful choices," Papers 2408.01317, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
    14. Theo Offerman, 2002. "Efficiency in Auctions with Private and Common Values: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 625-643, June.
    15. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Koessler, Frédéric, 2013. "Using or hiding private information? An experimental study of zero-sum repeated games with incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 103-120.
    16. Blume, Andreas & Gneezy, Uri, 2010. "Cognitive forward induction and coordination without common knowledge: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 488-511, March.
    17. Bruno Biais & Denis Hilton & Karine Mazurier & Sébastien Pouget, 2000. "Psychological Traits and Trading Strategies," CSEF Working Papers 39, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    18. Gabriel Natividad, 2013. "Financial Slack, Strategy, and Competition in Movie Distribution," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 846-864, June.
    19. Weber, Martin & Welfens, Frank, 2007. "How do Markets React to Fundamental Shocks? An Experimental Analysis on Underreaction and Momentum," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 07-42, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    20. Tilman Slembeck, 1999. "A Behavioral Approach to Learning in Economics - Towards an Economic Theory of Contingent Learning," Microeconomics 9905001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    outcome bias; unethical behavior; judgment; ethical decision making;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hbs:wpaper:08-080. 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: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    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.