International Journal on
Strategic Innovative Marketing
Vol.01 (2014) DOI: 10.15556/IJSIM.01.01.001
Priming effects on business ethical
decision making
John Tsalikis1,a, Ana V. Peralta1
1Florida
International University
a)Corresponding
author: [email protected]
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
PRIMING EFFECTS ON BUSINESS ETHICAL DECISION MAKING
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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
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3. Hypotheses
Based on the previous research in the priming field, the following hypotheses are
proposed:
H1:
H2:
H3:
H4:
H5:
Respondents primed with “politeness” will evaluate each of the 10
ethical scenarios as more unethical than respondents primed with
“neutral” stimuli.
Respondents primed with “rudeness” will evaluate each of the 10
ethical scenarios as less unethical than respondents primed with
“neutral” stimuli.
Respondents primed with “rudeness” will evaluate each of the 10
ethical scenarios as less unethical than respondents primed with
“politeness.”
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.
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:
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.
Scenarios
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:
PRIMING EFFECTS ON BUSINESS ETHICAL DECISION MAKING
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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
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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
Scenario
Neutral
Polite
Aggression
1. Bribe
-3.00
-3.49
-1.86
2.
-3.86
-3.65
-2.40
Overcharge
3. Injury
-4.29
-4.56
-3.09
4. Child
-3.33
-2.56
-2.74
labor
5. Guarantee -3.90
-3.74
-3.60
6. Discount
-3.76
-3.77
-2.53
7. Union
-3.10
-3.16
-.81
8. Hire
-2.48
-1.02
-2.30
9. Trick
.57
1.65
2.05
words
10.
2.48
2.37
3.67
Placement
N-P=Comparison between Neutral and Polite
N-A=Comparison between Neutral and Aggression
P-A=Comparison between Polite and Aggression
N-P
.44
.71
P-VALUES
N-A
.17
.06
P-A
.01
.04
.50
.23
.10
.30
.00
.73
.75
.99
.90
.05
.09
.59
.08
.00
.78
.03
.76
.03
.00
.03
.46
.88
.01
.01
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
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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].
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