Conflicting Loyalties: Cognitive Abstraction Drives Whistleblowing Behavior Among Those Who Value Loyalty.
Potential whistleblowers, that is, people contemplating revealing potentially damaging information about unethical or unlawful behavior to a third party, are often described as facing a conflict between loyalty and fairness. Yet, whistleblowers often may feel a sense of conflicting loyalties: loyalt...
| Publicado en: | Social Justice Research Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 48 - 75 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Mar2025
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=183130947&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 183130947 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08857466 4LL jtl: Social Justice Research issn: 08857466 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 38 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 183130947 10.1007/s11211-024-00447-9 ppf: 48 ppct: 27 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 815KB tig: atl: Conflicting Loyalties: Cognitive Abstraction Drives Whistleblowing Behavior Among Those Who Value Loyalty. aug: au: van Houwelingen, Gijs Bobocel, D. Ramona Okimoto, Tyler affil: https://ror.org/04dkp9463 Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 12, 1018TV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands https://ror.org/01bnjb948 Vector, TNO, Den Haag, Netherlands https://ror.org/01aff2v68 University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada https://ror.org/00rqy9422 The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia su: Whistleblowing Loyalty Whistleblowers Cognitive psychology Motor vehicle driving Dilemma sug: subj: Whistleblowing Loyalty Whistleblowers Cognitive psychology Motor vehicle driving Dilemma keyword: Abstraction Construal level Fairness Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology Abstraction Construal level Fairness Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology ab: Potential whistleblowers, that is, people contemplating revealing potentially damaging information about unethical or unlawful behavior to a third party, are often described as facing a conflict between loyalty and fairness. Yet, whistleblowers often may feel a sense of conflicting loyalties: loyalty towards the party (e.g., a colleague) that may be damaged by their blowing the whistle and loyalty towards the party (e.g., society at large) that may benefit. Understanding how people deal with such conflict of loyalties is critical for increasing whistleblowing and reducing unethical behavior. In three studies (total N = 929), we draw on construal level theory to demonstrate that, when loyalty motives are salient, the level of abstractness at which people construe a whistleblower dilemma affects whistleblowing behavior. Because the party that stands to benefit from whistleblowing is typically more global than the party that will be damaged, cognitive abstraction increases whistleblowing behavior relative to concreteness, particularly when loyalty (vs. fairness) is a salient motive. Moreover, Study 3 findings reveal that cognitive abstraction predicts whistleblowing through increased identification with global entities among people for whom loyalty is more salient. Hence, we demonstrate that whistleblowing decisions are influenced not only by the salience of certain moral motives, but also the way that people construe whistleblower dilemmas, namely, relatively abstractly or concretely. Altogether, our research offers a novel understanding of whistleblowing behavior—as a conflict between loyalties—and identifies a cognitive mechanism for promoting whistleblowing and reducing unethical behavior. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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