Individual differences in relational construal are associated with variability in moral judgment

Coproducing leadership: a reason to resist destructive leaders

Purpose

Follower's individual differences have been receiving increased attention in studying destructive leadership because followers may enable or disable it. One of these yet under-researched features is the role of followers' leadership coproduction beliefs (a role construal) in explaining their resistance to destructive leaders. Departing from the proactive motivation theory, this paper explores the robustness of coproduction beliefs by testing its ability to predict followers' resistance to destructive leaders across four situations – abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, organization directed behaviors and laissez-faire.

Design/methodology/approach

With a sample of 359 participants that answered a scenario-based survey, the present study tests the relationship between coproduction beliefs and resistance behaviors in the four mentioned groups, while controlling for alternative explanations. A multigroup analysis was conducted with PLS-SEM.

Findings

Constructive resistance is always favored by coproduction beliefs independently of the leader's type of destructive behavior. Dysfunctional resistance, however, is sensitive to the leader's type of destructive behavior.

Originality/value

This paper extends knowledge on the role of coproduction beliefs as an individual-based resource against destructive leaders.

Being on the same page about social rules and norms: Effects of shared relational models on cooperation in work teams

In working teams, each member has an individual understanding of the social rules and norms that underlie social relationships in the team, as well as about what behavior is appropriate and what behavior can be expected from others. What happens if the members of a team are not “on the same page” with respect to these social rules and norms? Drawing on relational models theory, which posits four elemental relational models that people use to coordinate their social interactions, we examined the effects of a common understanding of relational models in teams (i.e., “shared relational models”) on various aspects of cooperative and uncooperative behaviors. We hypothesized that a shared understanding of relational models in a team is positively related to justice perception and negatively related to relationship conflict, which are in turn related to helping behavior and knowledge hiding. We conducted a field study, collecting data from 46 work teams ( N = 189 total participants) in various organizations, and found support for all proposed hypotheses. Our findings emphasize the importance of a shared understanding of relational models for (un)cooperative behavior in teams, thereby opening a new door for research on relational models in organizations.

How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments

Judgments of whether an action is morally wrong depend on who is involved and the nature of their relationship. But how, when, and why social relationships shape moral judgments is not well understood. We provide evidence to address these questions, measuring cooperative expectations and moral wrongness judgments in the context of common social relationships such as romantic partners, housemates, and siblings. In a pre-registered study of 423 U.S. participants nationally representative for age, race, and gender, we show that people normatively expect different relationships to serve cooperative functions of care, hierarchy, reciprocity, and mating to varying degrees. In a second pre-registered study of 1,320 U.S. participants, these relationship-specific cooperative expectations (i.e., relational norms) enable highly precise out-of-sample predictions about the perceived moral wrongness of actions in the context of particular relationships. In this work, we show that this 'relational norms' model better predicts patterns of moral wrongness judgments across relationships than alternative models based on genetic relatedness, social closeness, or interdependence, demonstrating how the perceived morality of actions depends not only on the actions themselves, but also on the relational context in which those actions occur.

Harmonization of Green Motives and Green Business Strategies towards Sustainable Development of Hospitality and Tourism Industry: Green Environmental Policies

This study aims to investigate the direct impact of green motives (GM) and green business strategies (GBS) on sustainable development (SD) in the hospitality sector. It explores the direct links between GM and SD. Moreover, the mediating role of GBS between GM and SD was tested. The research relies on the stakeholders’ theory, which states that the organization’s success and future development depends on the satisfaction of stakeholders. Data were collected from 451 top managers and owners from 54 hotels (5, 4 and 3-star hotels) operating in Pakistan. Quantitative analysis including correlation, regression, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model techniques were used. The mediating role of GBS was assessed using the bootstrapping method. Results proved that GM and GBS enable hotel industry to achieve the targets of SD. Finding also proved that GBS act as a mediator between the GM and SD link. The hotel industry needs attention to achieve the targets of SD and customers’ inclination towards more hygienic and environmental issues after the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic situation has forced the hotel industry to adapt GBS initiated through GM. The current research articulated this upcoming issue and offered a SD model for the hotel industry.

"You're still worth it": The moral and relational context of politically motivated unfriending decisions in online networks

Political disagreements in social media can result in removing (i.e., “unfriending”) a person from one’s online network. Given that such actions could lead to the (ideological) homogenization of networks, it is pivotal to understand the psychological processes intertwined in unfriending decisions. This requires not only addressing different types of disagreements but also analyzing them in the relational context they occur. This article proposes that political disagreements leading to drastic measures such as unfriending are attributable to more deeply rooted moral dissents. Based on moral foundations theory and relationship regulation research, this work presents empirical evidence from two experiments. In both studies, subjects rated political statements (that violated different moral foundations) with regard to perceived reprehensibility and the likelihood of unfriending the source. Study 1 (N = 721) revealed that moral judgments of a political statement are moderately related to the unfriending decision. Study 2 (N = 822) replicated this finding but indicated that unfriending is less likely when the source of the morally reprehensible statement is relationally close to the unfriender and provides emotional support. This research extends unfriending literature by pointing to morality as a new dimension of analysis and offers initial evidence uncovering the psychological trade-off behind the decision of terminating digital ties. Drawing on this, our findings inform research on the homogenization of online networks by indicating that selective avoidance (in the form of politically motivated unfriending) is conditional upon the relational context and the interpersonal benefits individuals receive therein.

Who are “we” and why are we cooperating? Insights from social psychology

Tomasello argues in the target article that a sense of moral obligation emerges from the creation of a collaborative “we” motivating us to fulfill our cooperative duties. We suggest that “we” takes many forms, entailing different obligations, depending on the type (and underlying functions) of the relationship(s) in question. We sketch a framework of such types, functions, and obligations to guide future research in our commentary.

A brief assessment tool for investigating facets of moral judgment from realistic vignettes

Humans make moral judgments every day, and research demonstrates that these evaluations are based on a host of related event features (e.g., harm, legality). In order to acquire systematic data on how moral judgments are made, our assessments need to be expanded to include real-life, ecologically valid stimuli that take into account the numerous event features that are known to influence moral judgment. To facilitate this, Knutson et al. (in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(4), 378-384, 2010) developed vignettes based on real-life episodic memories rated concurrently on key moral features; however, the method is time intensive (~1.4-3.4 h) and the stimuli and ratings require further validation and characterization. The present study addresses these limitations by: (i) validating three short subsets of these vignettes (39 per subset) that are time-efficient (10-25 min per subset) yet representative of the ratings and factor structure of the full set, (ii) norming ratings of moral features in a larger sample (total N = 661, each subset N = ~220 vs. Knutson et al. N = 30), (iii) examining the generalizability of the original factor structure by replicating it in a larger sample across vignette subsets, sex, and political ideology, and (iv) using latent profile analysis to empirically characterize vignette groupings based on event feature ratings profiles and vignette content. This study therefore provides researchers with a core battery of well-characterized and realistic vignettes, concurrently rated on key moral features that can be administered in a brief, time-efficient manner to advance research on the nature of moral judgment.

Moral and Affective Film Set (MAAFS): A normed moral video database

Moral psychology has relied nearly exclusively on text stimuli in the development and testing of theories. However, text stimuli lack the rich variety of morally-relevant social and contextual cues available in everyday interactions. A consequence of this pervasive ecological invalidity may be that moral psychological theories are mischaracterized by an overreliance on cue-impoverished moral stimuli. We address this limitation by developing a cue-rich Moral and Affective Film Set (MAAFS). We crowd-sourced videos of moral behaviours, using previously validated text stimuli and definitions of moral foundations as a guide for content. Crowd-sourced clips were rated by 322 American and 253 Australian participants on a range of moral and affective dimensions, including wrongness, moral foundation relevance, punishment, arousal, discrete emotion-relevance, clarity, previous exposure, and how weird/uncommon the moral acts were. The final stimulus set contained sixty nine moral videos. Ratings confirmed that the videos are reliably rated as morally wrong and feature a variety of moral concerns. The validation process revealed features that make the MAAFS useful for future research: (1) the MAAFS includes a range of videos that depict everyday transgressions, (2) certain videos evoke negative emotions at an intensity comparable to mood induction films, (3) the videos are largely novel: participants had never seen more than 90% of the videos. We anticipate the MAAFS will be a particularly valuable tool for researchers in moral psychology who seek to study morality in scenarios that approximate real-life. However, the MAAFS may be valuable for other fields of psychology, for example, affective scientists may use these videos as a mood induction procedure. The complete stimulus set, links to videos, and normative statistics can be accessed at osf.io/8w3en.

Habitual Cognitive Reappraisal Was Negatively Related to Perceived Immorality in the Harm and Fairness Domains

Emotion plays an important role in moral judgment, and people always use emotion regulation strategies to modulate emotion, consciously or unconsciously. Previous studies had investigated only the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and moral judgment in the Harm domain, and revealed divergent results. Based on Moral Foundations Theory, the present study extended the investigation into moral judgment in all five moral domains and used a set of standardized moral vignettes. Two hundred and six college students filled in the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and completed emotional ratings and moral judgment on moral vignettes from Moral Foundations Vignettes. Correlation analysis indicated that habitual cognitive reappraisal was negatively related to immorality rating in Harm, Fairness, and Loyalty domains. Regression analysis revealed that after controlling the effect of other variables, cognitive reappraisal negatively predicted immorality ratings in the Harm and Fairness domains. Further mediation analysis showed that emotional valence only partially explained the association between cognitive reappraisal and moral judgment in Harm area. Some other factors beyond emotional valence were suggested for future studies.

Wrongness in different relationships: Relational context effects on moral judgment

Morality primarily serves social-relational functions. However, little research in moral psychology investigates how relational factors impact moral judgment, and a theoretically grounded approach to such investigations is lacking. We used Relational Models Theory and Moral Foundations Theory to explore how varying actor-victim relationships impacts judgment of different types of moral violations. Across three studies, using a diverse range of moral violations and varying the experimental design, relational context substantially influenced third-party judgment of moral violations, and typically independent of several factors strongly associated with moral judgment. Results lend novel but mixed support to Relationship Regulation Theory and provide some novel implications for Moral Foundations Theory. These studies highlight the importance of relational factors in moral psychology and provide guidelines for exploring how relational factors might shape moral judgment.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Morality: Deontological, Consequentialist, and Emotive Language Use in Justifications Across Foundation-Specific Moral Violations

Morality is inherently social, yet much extant work in moral psychology ignores the central role of social processes in moral phenomena. To partly address this, this article examined the content of persuasive moral communication-the way people justify their moral attitudes in persuasive contexts. Across two studies, we explored variation in justification content (deontological, consequentialist, or emotive) as a function of moral foundations. Using justification selection techniques (Study 1) and open-ended justification production (Study 2), results demonstrate a preference (a) for deontological appeals in justifications for the sanctity foundation, (b) for consequentialist appeals for the individualizing foundations (care and fairness), and (c) for emotive appeals in justifications for the binding foundations (loyalty, authority and sanctity). The present research questions the generality of inferences about the primacy of emotions/intuition in moral psychology research and highlights the important role of reasons in persuasive moral communication.