A colleague of mine recently forwarded a Harvard Business Review article (“Careful Deliberation Makes You More Likely To Cheat,” 11/18/11) that suggests we are more likely to behave unethically when acting deliberately as compared to simply acting on intuition. Researchers at the University of Toronto ran test participants through a variety of decision making scenarios in three different experiments.
Long story short, when moral judgments were framed as decisions to be made or problems to be solved, participants were far more likely to be deceptive – and less altruistic – than in scenarios where the moral judgments were simply posed as off-the-cuff questions based on intuition. Roughly 68% of participants in a “deliberative” mindset were willing to lie for their own gain compared to just 36% of those who were thinking about the situation “intuitively.” Test participants were also less likely to (for example) donate to a charity when they carefully considered the choice versus following their natural impulse.
The premise of this research is rather chilling for those of us in the ethics field. We spend so much time imploring our people to always “think before you act.” Should we instead coach people to simply “go with your gut?” My questions for you:
1) Knowing what you know about human nature, do you agree with the findings of this study? Why?
2) Are you personally more likely or less likely to act ethically and altruistically “in the moment” than if you stop to consider the situation first?
3) Have you ever observed a situation where thoughtful, sincere deliberation resulted in a less ethical/altruistic solution than if the decision makers simply went with pure intuition? What happened?
4) My dream is that all Best Buy employees become so ethically “enlightened” that they always know right from wrong based purely on intuition. What can we be doing to make this dream a reality?
I tend to agree with you. I think that sometimes when we think too hard about something we can cloud over simple, basic truths. But it is a fascinating discussion.
I’ve been thinking about the statistics you posted in a more positive light. What I see from those numbers is that 64% of people behave ethically by intuition, which is more than many would believe. On the other hand, my fiance believes that it simply shows that people take the easier route by intuition, because lying is difficult. What do you think?