Priming effects on business ethical decision making

International Journal on Strategic Innovative Marketing Vol.01 (2014) DOI: 10.15556/IJSIM.01.01.001 Priming effects on business ethical decision making John Tsalikis 1,a, Ana V. Peralta 1 1 Florida International University a)corresponding author: tsalikis@fiu.edu Abstract: The present study examines the effect of priming on business ethical decision making. Priming is based on the idea that our perceptions, actions, and emotions are distorted by unconscious cues from our environment. Subjects were primed for either politeness or rudeness using a sentence completion task. Following the priming, the subjects were asked to react to a series of ethical scenarios. The results showed that subjects primed for rudeness perceived the scenarios as less unethical than subjects primed for politeness. Keywords: Business Ethics, Priming, International Business, Social Psychology, Ethics 1. Introduction Since Sigmund Freud s famous iceberg analogy, it has been widely accepted that most of human thought and decision making takes place at the subconscious level. As social psychologist John A. Bargh put it, processes and behaviors thought to be under our control and caused by intentional volition are actually the result of the constant and automatic interpretation of and reaction to stimuli in our environment. These perceptions influence our thoughts and behavior, often without our awareness [1]. Ultimately, Bargh questions our level of free will and independent decisions making skills, and argues that our perception, actions, and emotions are distorted via stimuli in our social environment through a process called priming. In a series of seminal experiments on priming, Bargh et al. (1996) [2], used a sentence completion task to prime the subjects on politeness (using words like patiently, sensitively and appreciate) and rudeness (using words like aggressively, bother, and disturb). Consequently, the subjects were asked to report to the professor in an adjacent room where he was busy talking to another person. The subjects primed for politeness waited significantly more time before interrupting the professor than the subjects primed for rudeness. In a related experiment, subjects that were primed for old age with words like Florida, shuffleboard, wrinkles, and grey, walked significantly slower to the debriefing room [2]. The present study will use a similar priming methodology for politeness and rudeness to measure the effects on business ethical decision making. 1

2 PRIMING EFFECTS ON BUSINESS ETHICAL DECISION MAKING 2. Literature Review Priming Priming is the idea that various stimuli (subliminal, supraliminal, semantic, and visual) can influence mental representations, decision making and ultimately the behavior of individuals [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. Similarly, Harris et al. (2009) [8] argue that priming demonstrates that a variety of complex social and physical behaviors can be activated by relevant external stimuli without a person s intent to behave that way or awareness of the influence. The mechanism through which priming operates: appears to be an overlap or strong association between representations activated by the perception of a given type of behavior, and those used to enact that type of behavior oneself [9] -the same mechanism that creates tendencies toward imitation and mimicry in adults [10], [11] and which serves as a vital support for vicarious learning in young children (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005 [12] (in Harris et al., 2009) [8]. Studies demonstrate that the effects of priming can be ongoing and reappear long after the stimulus has been absent. In a William and Bargh (2008) [13] study, individuals who were primed with the touch of a hot drink judged target people as more caring and generous, while the opposite was true for the subjects that were primed with a cold drink. Levesque and Pelletier (2003) [14] found that subjects that were primed with intrinsic motivation words (challenge, mastery) enjoyed the consequent task (puzzle solving) more than subjects primed with extrinsic motivation words (forced, expected). In another priming experiment, individuals who were primed with the picture of a library proceeded with speaking more quietly and softly (Arts and Dijksterhuis, 2003) [15]. Uses of Priming in other fields In addition to social psychology, research on priming has been conducted in many fields including business. In advertising, the media is a main influential source due to unconscious, subtle and unobtrusive priming cues carried in both ads and program content [16]. Research by Harris et al. (2009) [8] tested whether exposure to televised commercials leads to the consumption of products high in fat and sugar which has fueled obesity through automatic binging effects. As Harris et al. put it, these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences. (emphasis added by author). Similar priming effects of media were observed on alcohol consumption [17], [18], [19], smoking [20] and beverage consumption [21], [22]. Friedman and Elliot (2008) [23] found that individuals who were exposed to the image of a sports drink influenced physical endurance. Similarly, individuals who were exposed with pictures of objects found in business settings (briefcase, boardroom tables), evidenced increased cognitive accessibility of competitionrelated associations [15]. In addition, Wang (2012) [24] found that visual priming of pharmaceutical advertising disclosures, increased trust perceptions among the test subjects. In marketing several studies established that consumers are influenced by marketing tactics (slogans, pricing, brand names) in subconscious ways [25], [26]. Laran et al. (2011) [27] found that brand names had positive priming effects while slogans seem to have negative priming effects.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON STRATEGIC INNOVATIVE MARKETING 3 3. Hypotheses Based on the previous research in the priming field, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1: Respondents primed with politeness will evaluate each of the 10 ethical scenarios as more unethical than respondents primed with neutral stimuli. H2: Respondents primed with rudeness will evaluate each of the 10 ethical scenarios as less unethical than respondents primed with neutral stimuli. H3: Respondents primed with rudeness will evaluate each of the 10 ethical scenarios as less unethical than respondents primed with politeness. H4: The effect of H1, H2 and H3 will be moderated by the consequences of the scenario. Scenarios with a high degree of consequences will be less significantly affected by the priming. H5: Demographic variables will not significantly influence priming s effect on ethical perceptions. 4. The experiment Priming Priming was achieved using a modification of Srull and Wyer (1979) [28] methodology where respondents are presented with a series of five words and are asked to make up a complete sentence using four of the five words (see Exhibit 1). In this process they are forced to use the following priming words: Scenarios Negative Prime: aggressively, rude, bother, disturbed, intrudes, annoying, interrupts, audaciously, brazen, impolitely, infringes, obnoxious, aggravating, bluntly. Positive Prime: respect, sensitively, considerate, appreciate, patiently, cordially, yield, polite, cautiously, courteously, graciously, discreetly, behaved, unobtrusively. Neutral Prime: exercising, consistently, occasionally, rapidly, sang, practiced, work out, climbed, discuss, send, watches, gives, clears, prepares. A plethora of research in business ethics utilizes the scenario/vignette approach. This approach presents the respondent with a short story describing an ethically questionable issue and then asks the respondent to evaluate this situation on an ethical scale. Representative studies utilizing this approach include: Fritzsche and Becker (1983), Akaah and Riordan (1989), Schminke (1997), and Stevenson and Bodkin (1998), [29], [30], [31], [32] along with many others. The ten scenarios utilized in the present study are presented in Exhibit 1. An array of business-related scenarios we considered and pretested. The ten scenarios were chosen because of clarity and relevancy to the respondents. The scenarios were designed to include a wide variety of consequences/harm; from the mild ones: 10. A retailer places candy next to the cashier in order for the kids to have easy access to the candy, resulting in higher sales to the ones that caused serious bodily harm:

4 PRIMING EFFECTS ON BUSINESS ETHICAL DECISION MAKING 3. A car manufacturer, in order to save money, decided to use substandard brakes in the cars sold in Europe. This practice resulted in the serious injury of several people. Procedure Data were gathered at a basic marketing class with mostly business students. The respondents were given a consent form and one of the three versions of the questionnaire at random (see Exhibit 1). In order to average out any order effect the order of presentation of the ten ethical scenarios was varied. Pre-Testing checks The levels for each version of priming moral intensity were pre-tested using business students. Respondents reported no clear understanding, or prior knowledge, of the priming method whilst they exhibited a clear understanding of all ten ethical scenarios, and the word task to be performed. Sample A convenience sample of mainly student respondents were gathered at a public university in Florida. There were 47.7% males, 15.1% were non-hispanic, 75.5% Hispanic, 4.7% Asian, and 4.7% other. Fifty eight percent reported as being born in the USA, 36.2% in a Latin American country and 5.7% in other countries. 5. Results Ethical Evaluation of the 10 scenarios The ten ethical scenarios used in this study were designed to vary on the degree of unethical/ethical behavior (mostly on the consequences of that behavior). Table 1 shows the mean overall ethical reactions on the ten scenarios. The most unethical scenario was Injury where the consequence of the car manufacturer s actions is serious injury to people. The least unethical scenarios were Trick words (the use of trick words in advertising), and Placement (the product placement of candy in from of the cashier). Table 1: Average Overall Ethical Evaluations for the 10 scenarios Scenario 3. Injury -3.92 5. Guarantee -3.72 6. Discount -3.27 2. Overcharge -3.19 4. Child labor -2.79 1. Bribe -2.74 7. Union -2.21 8. Hire -1.82 9. Trick words 1.60 10. Placement 2.92

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON STRATEGIC INNOVATIVE MARKETING 5 Priming Effect To test for the hypothesis that priming had a significant effect on the respondents ethical perceptions, a series of ONE-WAY ANOVAS was performed with PRIMING as the independent variable (three levels Neutral, Polite, Aggression) and the ethical reactions as the dependent variable. The results are presented in Table2. Based on the comparisons between the polite and aggressive priming, individuals primed for aggression showed a decreased sensitivity to the ethical situation (lower negative score). This result did not hold true for three out of the ten scenarios (4. Child labor, 5. Guarantee, and 9. Trick words). So hypothesis H3 is confirmed for the seven ethical scenarios. Except for scenario number 8 ( Hire ), the comparisons between the neutral priming and the polite we mostly non-significant. As a result, hypothesis H1 was not confirmed. To a lesser degree the same was true for the comparisons between the neutral and the aggressive priming with only five out of the ten scenarios showing a significant effect. At least for the scenarios 2, 6, 7, 9, and 10, the priming for aggression resulted in a lowering of the ethical sensitivity of the respondents. As a result, hypothesis H3 can only be confirmed for the aforementioned scenarios. Table 2: Comparisons Between the Three Primings MEANS P-VALUES Scenario Neutral Polite Aggression N-P N-A P-A 1. Bribe -3.00-3.49-1.86.44.17.01 2. -3.86-3.65-2.40.71.06.04 Overcharge 3. Injury -4.29-4.56-3.09.50.10.00 4. Child -3.33-2.56-2.74.23.30.73 labor 5. Guarantee -3.90-3.74-3.60.75.59.76 6. Discount -3.76-3.77-2.53.99.08.03 7. Union -3.10-3.16 -.81.90.00.00 8. Hire -2.48-1.02-2.30.05.78.03 9. Trick.57 1.65 2.05.09.03.46 words 10. 2.48 2.37 3.67.88.01.01 Placement N-P=Comparison between Neutral and Polite N-A=Comparison between Neutral and Aggression P-A=Comparison between Polite and Aggression Demographic Influences Due to the nature of the sample, only a limited set of demographic variables were measured. While some significant differences were observed, they do not appear to follow a consistent pattern and they might be explained by a form of the multiple measurements. 6. Conclusion

6 PRIMING EFFECTS ON BUSINESS ETHICAL DECISION MAKING According to Bargh and Williams (2006) [33], priming could lead to negative outcomes without the person s awareness and despite his or her good intentions. It appears that the results from this study verify these fears of negative outcomes. Respondents who were primed in a negative way (rudeness) became less ethically sensitive to most of the ethical situations. This effect is an indication that our ethical decision making is not guided solely by our moral fiber but is readily influenced by environmental cues that we have no control over and are not even aware of. A limitation of the present study is the sample. While business students are a convenient substitute, the priming effect needs to be studied with real working business people. While ten ethical scenarios were utilized, a broader range needs to be studied in order to see any variations of the priming effect depending on the situation. Finally, by the nature of the present study, the priming effect was isolated into only a politeness/rudeness dimension. Future research should not only concentrate on adding other priming factors but also introduce the interaction between the various factors. The present study emphasizes the unconscious nature of business ethical decision making. Unethical behavior by business can lead to a loss of business, image deterioration and ultimately decreased profitability. This research could make business people more aware of the environmental influences of their ethical behavior. This enhancement of one s self-concept and self-awareness could lead to better ethical decisions [34]. References [1]Bargh, John A. (1982). Attention and Automaticity in the Processing of Self relevant Information. Journal of Personality and Psychology, 43, 425-436. [2]Bargh, John A., Mark Chen and Lara Burrows (1996). Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244. [3]Bargh, John A. (1989). Conditional Automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. Guilford Press, 3-51. [4] Bargh, John A. (2006). What have we been Priming All these Years? On the Development, Mechanisms, and Ecology of Nonconscious Social Behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 147-168. [5]Higgins, E. T. (1996). Knowledge Activation: Accessibilitry, Applicability, and Salience, in E. T. Higgins, and A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, (p.133-168). NY: The Guilford Press. [6]Bargh, John A., and T. L. Chartrand (2000). The Mind in the Middle: A Practical Guide to Priming and Automaticity Research. In H. T. Reis and C. M. Judd (Eds.) Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, (p. 253-285), NY: Cambridge University Press. [7]Dijksterhuis, A., T. L. Chartrand, and H. Aarts (2007). Automatic Behavior. In J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes (p. 51-131), Philadelphia: Psychology Press. [8]Harris, Jennifer L., John, A. Bargh and Kelly D. Brownell (2009). Priming Effect of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior. Health Psychology, 28, 404-413. [9]Dijksterhuis, A., and J. A. Bargh (2001). The Perception-behavior Express-way: Automatic Effects on Social Perception on Social Behavior. In M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Psychology, 33, p. 1-40. [10]Bargh, John, A. (2005). Bypassing the Will: Towards Demystifying Behavioral Priming Effects. In R. Hassin, J. Uleman, and J. Bargh (Eds.), The New Unconscious, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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