Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
7-2021
Abstract
Competition can lead individuals to cheat; yet our knowledge of why competition affects cheating and how to mitigate these effects is limited. To address this limitation, we first contrast two theories: arousal theories of competition (via desire to win) and social cognitive theory (via impaired moral awareness). Our results were consistent with social cognitive theory in that competition impairs moral awareness and that this impairment explains why people cheat. We therefore build on social cognitive theory and show that two factors, moral identity and moral elevation, which are likely to make morality salient, moderated the effects of competition on cheating such that these effects were weaker for individuals whose moral identity was more (vs. less) chronically accessible or who were more (vs. less) morally elevated. We test our hypotheses in five experimental studies and one field study with students as well as working adult populations in India and the United States.
Keywords
cheating, competition, moral awareness, moral elevation, moral identity
Discipline
Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | Organizational Behavior and Theory
Research Areas
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources
Publication
Journal of Organizational Behavior
Volume
42
Issue
8
First Page
1060
Last Page
1081
ISSN
0894-3796
Identifier
10.1002/job.2545
Publisher
Wiley: 24 months
Citation
VADERA, Abhijeet K. and PATHKI, Chandra Shekhar.
Competition and cheating: Investigating the role of moral awareness, moral identity, and moral elevation. (2021). Journal of Organizational Behavior. 42, (8), 1060-1081.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6953
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
External URL
https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2545
Included in
Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons