Do as I say, not as I’ve done: Suffering for a misdeed reduces the hypocrisy of advising others against it

Effron, Daniel A.; Miller, Dale T.

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.07.004

Cited by 45 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In a review paper on proactivity at work, Grant and Ashford () proposed that, when the situation involves accountability for the individual, self‐monitoring will be related to proactive behavior because of a desire to create favorable impressions on others. Effron and Miller () and Wijn and van den Bos () conducted experiments and showed that those higher on self‐monitoring chose a persuasive communication style that would make them look less hypocritical and less self‐serving when negative evaluations by others was a realistic possibility.…”

Section: Self‐monitoring As a Moderatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐monitoring personality trait at work: An integrative narrative review and future research directions

2019

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Summary In this narrative review, we provide an overview of the self‐monitoring literature as it applies to the workplace context. Our starting point to the review is a meta‐analysis of self‐monitoring literature published in by Day, Schleicher, Unckless, and Hiller. After providing an overview of the theoretical basis of self‐monitoring and its measurement, we present a summary of the broad literature on self‐monitoring to examine the implications of self‐monitoring for employees and organizations. Based on our review, we identify the main outcomes of self‐monitoring as well as findings of the literature treating self‐monitoring as a moderator. We provide evidence that self‐monitoring has potential downsides, which would benefit from further investigation. We conclude our review by identifying important potential future research directions.

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Section: Self‐monitoring As a Moderatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐monitoring personality trait at work: An integrative narrative review and future research directions

2019

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“…Another possible explanation for the predictions in the current paper is that acknowledging causality while denying responsibility is a form of moral hypocrisy, and that power leads to greater moral hypocrisy (Batson, Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, ; Effron & Miller, ; Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, ). Moral hypocrisy refers to the practice of imposing strict moral standards on others, but not oneself.…”

Section: Other Reasons Powerful People Might Deny Responsibility For mentioning

confidence: 74%

“…An alternative explanation for our predictions is that dissociating responsibility from causality simply allows powerful people who have instigated unethical behavior to deny their responsibility for such behavior in the face of evidence indicating their role in orchestrating it. Indeed, powerful people may disingenuously disavow wrongdoing and engage in “excuse‐making” in order to protect their reputations (e.g., Effron & Miller, , ; Fast & Tiedens, ). For example, work has shown that people in positions of high power engage in more counterfactual thinking following a failure (Scholl & Sassenberg, ), and counterfactual excuses are a key means through which people deny responsibility for wrongdoing and preserve their self‐image (Markman & Tetlock, ).…”

Section: Other Reasons Powerful People Might Deny Responsibility For mentioning

confidence: 99%

Power and perceived influence: I caused your behavior, but I'm not responsible for it

Bohns

Newark

2018

Social & Personality Psych

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There are numerous examples of powerful people denying responsibility for others' (mis)conduct in which they played—and acknowledge playing—a causal role. The current article seeks to explain this conundrum by examining the difference between, and powerful people's beliefs about, causality and responsibility. Research has shown power to have numerous psychological consequences. Some of these consequences, such as overconfidence, are likely to increase an individual's belief that he or she caused another person's behavior. However, others, such as decreased perspective‐taking, are likely to decrease an individual's belief that he or she was responsible for another person's behavior. In combination, these psychological consequences of power may lead powerful people to believe that they instigated another's behavior while simultaneously believing that the other person could have chosen to do otherwise. The dissociation between these two attributions may help to explain why people in positions of power often deny responsibility for others' behavior—unethical or otherwise—that they undeniably caused.

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“…Indeed, rather than compensate for or erase the shortcoming, such efforts may actually compound perceivers' concerns about being harmed by those others and strike them as the epitome of moral hypocrisy. This notion is supported by evidence that people believe others are less entitled to advise against committing a transgression when those others have themselves committed the transgression, and thus respond with anger and derogation, especially if those others had not paid a price for the transgression they had committed (Effron & Miller, 2015).…”

Section: Incompensabilitymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Or they may choose to focus on addressing the threat of harm from others' unethicality by condemning such behavior and rejecting attempts to rationalize it, at the cost of precluding the ability to rationalize their own actions. Indeed, suffering for one's misdeed has been found to legitimize the right to warn others against committing it (Effron & Miller, 2015). Alternatively, people may choose to engage in deliberate moral hypocrisy by knowingly rationalizing their own unethical behavior while condemning the same behavior from others, at the cost of cognitive dissonance that would arise from such blatant inconsistency (Stone, Wiegand, Cooper, & Aronson, 1997) and at least an implicit awareness that they have been hypocrites.…”

Section: The (Would Be) Hypocrite's Dilemmamentioning

confidence: 99%

A Theory of Ethical Accounting and Its Implications for Hypocrisy in Organizations

Kim¹,

Wiltermuth²,

Newman³

2019

Proceedings

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Management scholars have typically regarded the widespread instances of hypocrisy across business, religious, and political institutions to be motivated and strategic. We suggest, however, that hypocrisy may stem not only from people's motivation to interpret and utilize information in a self-serving manner, but also from fundamental differences in people's access to that information itself. More specifically, we present a multi-stage Theory of Ethical Accounting (TEA) that describes how this differential access to information, specifically about the self vs. others, can create an interrelated series of cognitive distortions in how people account for the same unethical behavior. TEA posits that such distortions can allow people to believe they are being fair and consistent when appraising the morality of the self and others, while actually being inconsistent in how they do so, and describes how this can ultimately make it harder to address not only hypocrisy but unethical behavior more broadly in organizations.

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Do as I say, not as I’ve done: Suffering for a misdeed reduces the hypocrisy of advising others against it

Cited by 45 publications

References 63 publications

Self‐monitoring personality trait at work: An integrative narrative review and future research directions

Self‐monitoring personality trait at work: An integrative narrative review and future research directions

Power and perceived influence: I caused your behavior, but I'm not responsible for it

A Theory of Ethical Accounting and Its Implications for Hypocrisy in Organizations

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