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Deterring Deception: Approaches to Maximize Ethical Behavior in Social Interactions and Organizations

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The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication

Abstract

People may assume that dishonesty is due to dispositional differences in morality. However, situational cues and social influences often have strong effects on a person’s level of deception. Social norms, ease of rationalization, and ambiguity of the unethicality of the behavior all play a role in increasing or decreasing deceptive behavior by making the ethical and moral implications of one’s behavior more or less salient. When the moral implications of a deceptive action are out of awareness, then deceptive behavior is more likely. In this chapter, we review ways that ethical behavior can be nudged into awareness in social interactions and organizations. We review five nudges that could affect deceptive behavior, including the framing of message or situation, social norms on what is deceptive or unethical, moral licensing, the salience of the deceptive action, and perceptions of fairness and justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Lyn M. Van Swol & Hangsan Paul Ahn

  2. Department of Marketing, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Evan Polman

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  1. Lyn M. Van Swol
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  2. Evan Polman
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Correspondence to Lyn M. Van Swol .

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  1. Department of Communication Studies, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USA

    Tony Docan-Morgan

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Van Swol, L.M., Polman, E., Ahn, H.P. (2019). Deterring Deception: Approaches to Maximize Ethical Behavior in Social Interactions and Organizations. In: Docan-Morgan, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_35

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