Injustice Promotes Unethical Behavior Through Moral Disengagement

Abstract

AbstractPeople are aversive to injustice. Yet how injustice experiences influence people’s ethic violation is understudied. Across three studies, we found that injustice increases unethical behavior and that moral disengagement is an underlying driver of this effect. By measuring (Study 1) and manipulating injustice (Study 2), two studies demonstrated that moral disengagement mediated the association between injustice and unethical behavior. Consistent with the moral disengagement mechanism, experimentally lowering participants’ moral disengagement eliminated the effect of injustice on unethical behavior (Study 3). These findings add to the literature on injustice as well as unethical behavior and have important implications. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/p9wev/?view_only=0fa9ab72186e45969347eb82cf22b53a