Moral disengagement, the dark triad, and unethical consumer attitudes
By Vincent Egan, N. Hughes, Emma J. Palmer. 2015
224 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Purpose Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement explains how otherwise ethical persons can behave immorally. We examined whether a trait model of general personality and the “dark triad” underlay moral disengagement, the relationship these constructs have to unethical consumer attitudes, and whether moral disengagement provided incremental validity in the prediction of antisocial behaviour. Methods Self-report data were obtained from a community sample of 380 adults via an online survey that administered all measures. Results Correlations between unethical consumer attitudes, lower Agreeableness, lower Conscientiousness, higher moral disengagement, higher psychopathy, and higher Machiavellianism were captured by a single factor. When this broad factor was examined using regression, demographic, personality and the dark triad traits all predicted moral disengagement, specific influences being age, education, Intellect, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. A similar model examining predictors of unethical consumer attitudes again found all blocks contributed to the outcome, with specific influence provided by age, Intellect, and moral disengagement, the latter showing incremental validity as a predictor of unethical consumer attitudes. Conclusions Moral disengagement is based on low Agreeableness, Machiavellianism and psychopathic-type traits, but provides incremental validity in predicting antisocial attitudes to a trait model alone. Narcissism is neither related to moral disengagement, nor unethical consumer attitudes.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Information Systems and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8baa4157dedf89d2c5f14fd3770e1b15d05ae5df
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In Clinical Psychology
In Cognitive Neuroscience
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Citations in the corpus
- Investigating When and Why Psychological Entitlement Predicts Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior (2019, background): “Furthermore, studies have found that certain personality traits predict one’s tendency to morally disengage (e.g., Egan et al. 2015).”