The differential effects of integral pride and gratitude on divergent moral judgment for the self versus others

Individuals tend to have divergent moral judgment when judging oneself versus others, which is termed moral hypocrisy. While prior research has examined different factors that might influence moral hypocrisy, there are limited insights on the influences of different, discrete emotions. The present research seeks to address this gap and examines the differential influences of pride and gratitude on moral hypocrisy. Results of a pilot study and three main studies demonstrate that pride (but not gratitude) leads to moral hypocrisy. These effects are replicated across different cases of questionable behaviors and prosocial behaviors in a team setting. More importantly, this research identifies one mechanism that potentially explains this effect—the appraisal of self-other similarity. The findings of this research thus provide empirical evidence that distinct emotions arising from an organizational setting can differentially influence moral hypocrisy and offer practical implications. JEL Classification: C91, D23, D91

Corporate hypocrisy

This review article aimed to contribute to the understanding of the importance of coherence between saying and acting to prevent companies from being perceived from the perspective of business hypocrisy and affecting the brand, reputation, trust and credibility in the company. It was carried out based on the Methodi Ordinatio, addressing its theoretical origins and then approaching the concept, later venturing into the different studies that have approached it from corporate social responsibility (CSR), ethics; reputation, interest groups (stakeholders), and communication, subsequently in relation to the consequences that it generates in world-known organizations, their statements and the criticism made, subsequently an analysis of three aspects or facets is made in which it is presented namely: moral hypocrisy; behavioral hypocrisy and how to attribute business hypocrisy, the next point presents a typology that involves two dimensions: an orientation that refers to the attention span, in the short and long term of participants when making or responding to accusations of hypocrisy and a temporal direction, which refers to the point of comparison, past or future, finally reaches some conclusions, and some practical implications.

Natural Roots of Moral Hypocrisy

The human ontogenetic (developmental) unique bifurcation compared to other animal ontogenies is the emergence of make beliefs. It is when, from around two years of age, children start seamlessly to switch from discriminating and categorizing, as well as recombining categories in the here and now of perception and action, to start doing the same thing but in the realm of realities that exist only in their heads, the internal products of their own imagination. From this point on and at an exponential rate, the engagement of the basic process of discrimination and categorization operates on “decoupled” realities. This is what primarily set us apart in Nature from a general psychological and cognitive perspective. The natural roots of moral hypocrisy and other blatant moral inconsistencies are to be found not only in the categorical discrimination process embedded in our brains, a process that—from the outset—we share with all other mindful animals. These roots are also and more specifically to be found in the bootstrapping and recursive inference mechanisms that feed onto themselves. These mechanisms bring children by the second year to the incomparable symbolic and decoupled levels of our own self-conscious imagination. It is this imagination that parses the world in essential clusters as a function of particular spherical alliances, each defining particular moral contexts. These contexts call for character roles that are often deeply irreconcilable, only manageable for those endowed with a compartmentalized mind. This compartmentalization is at the origins of our moral acrobatics and the human propensity to think about the world in black and white.

The Effects of Synchrony on Group Moral Hypocrisy

Humans have evolved various social behaviors such as interpersonal motor synchrony (i.e., matching movements in time), play and sport or religious ritual that bolster group cohesion and facilitate cooperation. While important for small communities, the face-to-face nature of such technologies makes them infeasible in large-scale societies where risky cooperation between anonymous individuals must be enforced through moral judgment and, ultimately, altruistic punishment. However, the unbiased applicability of group norms is often jeopardized by moral hypocrisy, i.e., the application of moral norms in favor of closer subgroup members such as key socioeconomic partners and kin. We investigated whether social behaviors that facilitate close ties between people also promote moral hypocrisy that may hamper large-scale group functioning. We recruited 129 student subjects that either interacted with a confederate in the high synchrony or low synchrony conditions or performed movements alone. Subsequently, participants judged a moral transgression committed by the confederate toward another anonymous student. The results showed that highly synchronized participants judged the confederate’s transgression less harshly than the participants in the other two conditions and that this effect was mediated by the perception of group unity with the confederate. We argue that for synchrony to amplify group identity in large-scale societies, it needs to be properly integrated with morally compelling group symbols that accentuate the group’s overarching identity (such as in religious worship or military parade). Without such contextualization, synchrony may create bonded subgroups that amplify local preferences rather than impartial and wide application of moral norms.

Human Self-Reflective Curse

Moral hypocrisy and duplicity are the rule rather than just exceptions. Both are inseparable from self-consciousness and humans’ unique concern for reputation. It is linked to face-maintenance (keeping apparent moral self-unity) in the midst of obvious contradictions. Powerful examples abound, such as the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian. We are indeed moral acrobats, and this has its roots in self-consciousness, the pillar of our human nature. Self-conscious psychology leads toward obligatory existential rumination of deeply unsettling existential truths. These truths shape our moral sense, in particular what we feel and construe as right or wrong and what we experience and reason as just or unjust.