Promoting Honesty in Business: The Role of Contemplation Questions

• Applicant: Professorin Carmen Tanner, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; Accounting and Finance
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460293325

Honesty plays a vital role in society and business, supporting mutual trust and efficient interactions. However, as the last financial crisis and numerous business ethical scandals demonstrate, deception, lying, fraud, etc. are still widespread. Such recurring ethical scandals have raised questions about why people engage in dishonest behavior. In this research, rather than considering the removal of negative antecedents, we focus on positive tools by which honest behavior can be actively promoted. Research suggests that a mere focus on structure-oriented or control-driven intervention programs face the problem that they can lead to undesirable side-effects. That makes enhancing individuals' capacity for moral self-governance an important topic for new research. In this research, we address this issue by focusing on a value-oriented or self-regulatory approach that centers on increasing individuals' capabilities to cope with ethical challenges at the workplace. In terms of mechanisms underlying honest behavior, we rely on moral self-regulation and moral agency theories, as well as on behavioral ethics research that has identified numerous cognitive and motivational biases (so-called ethical blind spots) individuals may exhibit. In terms of activating self-regulatory processes, we draw on the idea to develop and examine the power of facing oneself with simple but smart questions. Interesting examples of such contemplation questions are the "mirror test" or the "publicity test," which are expected to raise either private and public self-image concerns and to initiate self-regulatory processes.The proposed research has three objectives. To do justice to real world organizational environments, our first goal is (by conducting expert interviews) to get a better understanding of the variety of honesty-related conflict situations that realistically arise in professional life. The second goal is to develop and investigate in experimental studies the potential of various simple contemplation questions in increasing honesty and counteracting ethical blind spots. Finally, the third goal is to examine in an intervention study with professionals the effectiveness of a novel game-based learning tool to enhance honesty and one's self-perceived sense of moral strength. For this purpose, we will implement the conflict situations previously identified in a tailor-made digital tool to provide trainees with opportunities for applying the contemplation questions repeatedly and over an extended time to real-world challenges.Overall, this project will improve our understanding of the functioning of moral motivation and the role of private vs. public self-regulation when faced with honesty-related dilemmas. It also contributes to cultivating moral agency and honesty in business. At a time, in which digitization plays a major role in society at large, our game-based tool may help bridging the gap between moral values and behavior among both students and professionals.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Alexander F. Wagner