Green Talk or Green Walk: Chinese Consumer Positive Word-of-Mouth to Corporate Environmental Actions in Polluting Industries

Although environmental action is regarded as a public relations strategy aiming to manifest a corporate green stance, this not always the case. Many consumers tend to be skeptical of corporate real environmental efforts, especially firms in traditionally dirty industries. However, few studies have focused on this issue. To shed light on such a phenomenon, the present study aims to provide a comprehensive multiple-step multiple-mediator model based on the social intuitionist model and cognitive-affective system theory of personality(CAPS) to examine how corporate environmental actions (substantive vs. symbolic) affect consumer positive word-of-mouth (WOM) and to investigate the cognitive and affective processes of greenwashing perception and other-condemning emotions. Findings from an online Chinese consumer panel of 130 adults indicate that consumers are prone to have more positive WOM for substantive actions compared with symbolic actions; this effect is not only mediated by other-condemning emotions but serially mediated by, firstly, greenwashing perception and, secondly, other-condemning emotions. The current study is conducive to explaining the link between corporate environmental actions and consumer positive WOM from a theoretical argument and empirical evidence, and thus providing suggestions for advertisers and marketers in green marketing about environmental information disclosure.

Foundations and tools of business ethics

This chapter introduces the most important interdisciplinary foundations and tools of business ethics. First, the authors discuss the philosophical foundations and concepts. The most important normative ethical theories, the notion of a reflective equilibrium, and several tools for justifying norms under dissent are introduced. Second, economic and socio-scientific foundations and tools are discussed, scrutinizing different concepts of rationality and assessments of social conditions. The importance of dilemma structures lies at the core of this section. Third, the authors present psychological foundations and tools, introducing the behavioral approach to ethics, dual process theory, and Haidt’s social intuitionist model to moral judgment, with its emphasis on the limits of reason for moral judgment. Moreover, the relevance of bounded ethicality in individuals and organizations for business ethics is outlined.

Facts or Feelings?

The social intuitionist model has significant implications for the study of communication. Specifically, this chapter argues that the social intuitionist model reveals the limitations of rational argument and illustrates factors contributing to misinformation. This argument is developed through a series of four observations. First, communicators have attempted to combat misinformation through rational argument. Second, centuries of interdisciplinary insights revealing the intuitive nature of human decision-making cast doubt on strategies that appeal to audiences primarily through facts and reason. Third, application of the social intuitionist model to contemporary American politics can help explain several puzzling dynamics, including the appeal of Donald Trump and the persistence of misinformation. Fourth, communication scholarship can be improved through greater recognition of the influence of intuition upon decision-making. This chapter concludes by proposing ways that emotional narratives can be used to bridge gaps between public opinion and expert consensus.

Individual Journalistic Bias Leads to Public Propaganda

The social intuitionist model (SIM) highlights the superiority of intuitive emotions over reasoning process in the link of moral judgment and reasoning, addressing the issues of private or individual intuitions of moral judgments on an interpersonal communication level. While the SIM can be applied to explain why journalists are biased and prone to producing intuitive news stories, the hierarchy of influences model (HIM) offers a theoretical framework that affects media content, which journalists and media organizations create in a social and cultural approach to propaganda. This chapter explores how the integration of SIM and HIM demonstrates the path to propagandistic news stories manufactured by intuitive journalists and their biased news outlets on the macro social structure level.

“Calling Bullshit”

This chapter reports an original experimental study that explores the idea that “calling bullshit” may shed light on how we reach a conclusion quickly, following Mercier and Sperber's social intuitionist theory of how we reason. According to the social intuitionist model, instead of going from deliberating and finding reasons prior to arriving at conclusions, as in the rationalist model, we typically go from conclusions backwards to reasons. Little if any empirical research has studied how we come to the determination “that's bullshit,” especially our ability to decide that something is bullshit so quickly. This study explores the relationship between the strength of belief in four ideologies and the speed of “calling bullshit.” The experiment tests the effect of strength of belief in the worldviews of Individualism, Communitarianism, Hierarchicalism, and Egalitarianism. It also examines reaction time for instances of confirming versus disconfirming the subject's worldview as well as age of the subject.

Why Is Change Hard?

This book chapter will first introduce theories in social and cognitive psychology to describe the process of change. The social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001) is applied to illustrate how communication operates in human function. When confronted by the need to change, individuals respond first from intuition, and only after our response do, we acquire rational justification. Additionally, this chapter provides explanations of traumatic brain functions from the neuroscience perspective. Practitioners have to recognize both the intuitive and deliberative process when working with individuals who experience trauma with physiological reactivity. This chapter also discusses strategies to reduce traumatic stress and restore the proper balance between the rational and emotional brain.

How Imagined Interaction Conflict-Linkage Theory Complements Social Intuitionist Theory in Terms of Moral Judgments

Traditionally, research on moral reasoning has been based on the idea that moral judgments are based on reasoning and cognitive development. For example, Kohlberg's classic model of moral reasoning argues that morality develops with aging and experience in terms of preconventional, conventional, and postconventional beliefs. Conversely, Haidt's social intuitionist model offers a view in which moral judgments can be impetuous and driven primarily by intuition, not reason. This idea reflects the concept of moral dumbfounding, in which people maintain a moral judgment based on conditioning. A cognitive theory that explains the conditioning for moral dumbfounding is imagined interaction conflict-linkage theory. This theory explains how arguments are ruminated in the mind. People often remember episodes of disagreement, arguing, or fighting and dwell on them. This chapter will review research in these areas. Additionally, a few examples pertaining to personality and ideological beliefs in terms of COVID-19 pandemic compliance and rule violations are discussed.

Ethical Leadership and Team Ethical Voice and Citizenship Behavior in the Military: The Roles of Team Moral Efficacy and Ethical Climate

In recent years, unethical conduct (e.g., Enron, Lehman Brothers, Oxfam, Volkswagen) has become an important issue in management; relatedly, there is growing interest regarding the nature and implications of ethical leadership. Drawing from social learning theory, we posited that ethical leadership would positively relate to team ethical voice and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through team moral efficacy. Furthermore, building on social information processing theory and the social intuitionist model, we expected these effects to be accentuated in teams with a strong ethical climate. Using survey data from subordinates and leaders pertaining to 150 teams from the Republic of Korea Army, ethical leadership was found to indirectly relate to increased team ethical voice and OCB directed at individuals and the organization through team moral efficacy. These relationships tended to be amplified among teams with a strong ethical climate. In addition, these findings persisted while controlling for transformational leadership, thereby highlighting the incremental value of ethical leadership for team outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.