| Description |
As a mode of thought and information processing strategy, intuition can lead people to behave ethically. However, very little is known about when intuition leads to ethical outcomes and why. Drawing on research on prosociality, I argue that intuitive decisions are generally more ethical than deliberative ones because people have a spontaneous concern for others’ interests, which can be overcome by self-interested deliberation. Drawing on research on framing, I argue that intuition is less likely to result in ethical decisions under the condition of business framing because business framing attenuates the effect of intuition on the concern for others’ interests. I examine the relationships among mode of thought (i.e., intuition vs. deliberation), framing of the decision making context (i.e., business vs. nonbusiness), the concern for others’ interests, and the ethicality of one’s decisions in a series of experiments. Data across these studies did not provide empirical support for my predictions. However, I found incidental yet consistent empirical evidence that the concern for others’ interests is positively associated with ethical decisions. |
