Moral disengagement, the dark triad, and unethical consumer attitudes

Purpose: Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement explains how otherwise ethical persons can behave immorally. We examined whether a trait model of general personality and the ‘‘dark triad’’ underlay moral disengagement, the relationship these constructs have to unethical consumer attitudes, and whether moral disengagement provided incremental validity in the prediction of antisocial behaviour. Methods: Self-report data were obtained from a community sample of 380 adults via an online survey that administered all measures. Results: Correlations between unethical consumer attitudes, lower Agreeableness, lower Conscientiousness, higher moral disengagement, higher psychopathy, and higher Machiavellianism were captured by a single factor. When this broad factor was examined using regression, demographic, personality and the dark triad traits all predicted moral disengagement, specific influences being age, education, Intellect, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. A similar model examining predictors of unethical consumer attitudes again found all blocks contributed to the outcome, with specific influence provided by age, Intellect, and moral disengagement, the latter showing incremental validity as a predictor of unethical consumer attitudes. Conclusions: Moral disengagement is based on low Agreeableness, Machiavellianism and psychopathictype traits, but provides incremental validity in predicting antisocial attitudes to a trait model alone. Narcissism is neither related to moral disengagement, nor unethical consumer attitudes. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. While people generally know right from wrong, some find it easier to disengage from their ethical principles than others. This behaviour is called moral disengagement. A common example of moral disengagement is consumer dishonesty, which is defined as: ‘‘the moral principles and standards that guide behavior of individuals or groups as they obtain, use, and dispose of goods and services’’ (Muncy & Vitell, 1992, pp. 298). Apparent ‘‘petty’’ dishonesty (Egan & Taylor, 2010) harms UK businesses to the cost of at least £294 million pounds per annum (National Fraud Authority., 2011). The current study examined general and darker personality traits underpinning moral disengagement, using unethical consumer attitudes as a specific criminological outcome. Moral disengagement (Bandura, 1986) provides a specific model to explain how persons breach their personal ethics. Individuals generally seek consistency in held moral beliefs to avoid a discrepancy between what they believe to be right, and how they actually behave. This is because conflicts between inconsistent behaviours and beliefs classically produce feelings of psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). If one can disengage from personal moral standards, it becomes easier to justify engaging in behaviours normally considered immoral. Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, and Pastorelli (1996) described eight mechanisms by which disengagement of morals may occur; moral justification (justifying a wrongful act as virtuous in terms of the perceived potential outcome); euphemistic labelling (using language to conceal guilt by distorting what happened, as when a thief says they ‘‘found’’ a stolen item); advantageous comparison (justifying a wrongful act by fallaciously comparing it to another’s more egregious acts); displacement of responsibility (when an individual’s wrong-doing is attributed to being under pressure or orders from another); diffusion of responsibility (where a shared decision to behave immorally means no individual involved in the wrongful act believes they are fully culpable for the events which occur); disregarding or distorting the consequences (ignoring or minimising the outcome of the wrongful action); dehumanisation (rejecting the human qualities of one’s opponent and seeing them as bestial); and attribution of blame (suggesting the blame for wrongful action lies in the provocation of the victim who http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.054 0191-8869/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (V. Egan), nathughes@ hotmail.co.uk (N. Hughes), [email protected] (E.J. Palmer). URL: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medicine/about/psychiatryandappliedpsychology/people/vincent.egan (V. Egan). Personality and Individual Differences 76 (2015) 123–128