The psychological mechanism and prevention strategy of slippery slope

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1042.2020.00650

Abstract

Abstract:

The slippery slope effect refers to the degree of the individuals’ immorality to increase gradually over time, namely, the immoral behavior is repetitive and progressive. It widely exists in the behaviors of the individuals and interpersonal interaction, which will affect the normal social interaction between individuals, and even hinder the harmonious development of society. The research methods of the slippery slope effect include experimenter manipulation and spontaneous deception. There are at least three psychological mechanisms: moral disengagement, implicit biases, and self-dehumanization. The ways to intervene in this effect are promoting preventive orientation motivation and shaping positive descriptive social norms. Future studies should further explore the scope of the slippery slope effect and its neural intervention from the perspective of psychological processes and physiological mechanisms.

Key words: slippery slope, moral disengagement, implicit biases, self-dehumanization, prevention focus, descriptive norms

CLC Number:

B849:C91

OU Honglei, SUN Binghai, ZHANG Wenhai, LI Weijian. The psychological mechanism and prevention strategy of slippery slope[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2020, 28(4): 650-660.

References 71

1	陈银飞, 茅宁 . ( 2011). 变化盲视, 滑坡效应与供应商伦理管理的实验研究. 软科学, 25( 9), 125-129.
2	郑琴琴 . ( 2009). 动态视角下的企业道德滑坡行为研究. 经济理论与经济管理, ( 11), 69-75.
3	Ashforth, B. E., & Anand, V . ( 2003). The Normalization of corruption in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 25( 19), 1-52.
4	Banaji M. R., Bazerman M. H., & Dolly C . ( 2003). How (un)ethical are you? Harvard Business Review, 81( 12), 56-64.
5	Bandura A., Barbaranelli C., Caprara G. V., & Pastorelli C . ( 1996). Multifaceted impact of self-efficacy beliefs on academic functioning. Child Development, 67( 3), 1206-1222.
6	Barnes C. M., Gunia B. C., & Wagner D. T . ( 2015). Sleep and moral awareness. Journal of Sleep Research, 24( 2), 181-188.
7	Baron R. A., Zhao H., & Miao Q . ( 2015). Personal motives, moral disengagement, and unethical decisions by entrepreneurs: Cognitive mechanisms on the “slippery slope”. Journal of Business Ethics, 128( 1), 107-118.
8	Bartra O., Mcguire J. T., & Kable J. W . ( 2013). The valuation system: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of BOLD fMRI experiments examining neural correlates of subjective value. Neuroimage, 76( 1), 412-427.
9	Bastian B., Jetten J., & Radke H. R. M . ( 2012). Cyber- dehumanization: Violent video game play diminishes our humanity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48( 2), 486-491.
10	Baumeister R. F., Bratslavsky E., Muraven M., & Tice D. M . ( 1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74( 5), 1252-1265.
11	Baumgartner T., Fischbacher U., Feierabend A., Lutz K., & Fehr E . ( 2009). The neural circuitry of a broken promise. Neuron, 64( 5), 756-770.
12	Bazerman, M. H., & Tenbrunsel, A. E . ( 2011). Ethical breakdowns. Harvard Business Review, 89( 4), 58-65.
13	Bok, S . ( 1989). Secrets: On the ethics of concealment and revelation. New York: Vintage.
14	Burger, J. M . ( 2009). Replicating milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64( 1), 1-11.
15	Cain D. M., Loewenstein G., & Moore D. A . ( 2005). The dirt on coming clean: Perverse effects of disclosing conflicts of interest. Journal of Legal Studies, 34( 1), 1-25.
16	Cialdini R. B., Reno R. R., & Kallgren C. A . ( 1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 58( 6), 1015-1026.
17	Courtois, C., & Gendron, Y . ( 2017). The “Normalization” of deviance: A case study on the process underlying the adoption of deviant behavior. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, 36( 3), 15-43.
18	Detert J. R., Trevino L. K., & Sweitzer V. L . ( 2008). Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93( 2), 374-391.
19	Dogan A., Morishima Y., Heise F., Tanner C., Gibson R., Wagner A. F., & Tobler P. N . ( 2016). Prefrontal connections express individual differences in intrinsic resistance to trading off honesty values against economic benefits. Scientific Reports, 6, 33263.
20	Effron D. A., Bryan C. J., & Keith M. J . ( 2015). Cheating at the end to avoid regret. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 109( 3), 395-414.
21	Eisenberg, N . ( 2000). Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 665-697.
22	Engelmann, J. B., & Fehr, E . ( 2016). The slippery slope of dishonesty. Nature Neuroscience, 19( 12), 1543-1544.
23	Fischbacher, U., & Föllmi-Heusi, F . ( 2013). Lies in disguise-An experimental study on cheating. Journal of the European Economic Association, 11( 3), 525-547.
24	Fischer P., Greitemeyer T., & Frey D . ( 2007). Ego depletion and positive illusions: Does the construction of positivity require regulatory resources? Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 33( 9), 1306-1321.
25	Francesca, G., & Dan, A . ( 2012). The dark side of creativity: Original thinkers can be more dishonest. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 102( 3), 445-459.
26	Ganis G., Kosslyn S. M., Stose S., Thompson W. L., & Yurgelun-Todd D. A . ( 2003). Neural correlates of different types of deception: An fMRI investigation. Cerebral Cortex, 13( 8), 830-836.
27	Garrett N., Lazzaro S. C., Ariely D., & Sharot T . ( 2016). The brain adapts to dishonesty. Nature Neuroscience, 19( 12), 1727-1732.
28	Gino, F., & Bazerman, M. H . ( 2009). When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others' unethical behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45( 4), 708-719.
29	Henderson A., Thoelen G., Nadler A., Barraza J., & Nave G . ( 2018). Testing the influence of testosterone administration on men's honesty in a large laboratory experiment. Scientific Reports, 8, 10.
30	Higgins, E. T . ( 1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94( 3), 319-340.
31	Hippel W. V., Lakin J. L., & Shakarchi R. J . ( 2005). Individual differences in motivated social cognition: The case of self-serving information processing. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 31( 10), 1347-1357.
32	Hofmann W., Meindl P., Mooijman M., & Graham J . ( 2018). Morality and self-control: How they are intertwined and where they differ. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27( 4), 286-291.
33	Huntsinger J. R., Lun J., Sinclair S., & Clore G. L . ( 2009). Contagion without contact: Anticipatory mood matching in response to affiliative motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35( 7), 909-922.
34	Kayyal M. H., Pochedly J., McCarthy A., & Russell J. A . ( 2015). On the limits of the relation of disgust to judgments of immorality. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 951.
35	Kern, M. C., & Chugh, D . ( 2009). Bounded ethicality: The perils of loss framing. Psychological Science, 20( 3), 378-384.
36	Köbis N. C., van Prooijen J. W., Righetti F., & van Lange P. A . ( 2015). “Who doesn't?”--The impact of descriptive norms on corruption. Plos One, 10( 6), e0131830.
37	Köbis N. C., van Prooijen J. W., Righetti F., & van Lange P. A .( 2017). The road to bribery and corruption: Slippery slope or steep cliff? Psychological Science, 28( 3), 297-306.
38	Kouchaki M., Dobson K. S. H., Waytz A., & Kteily N. S . ( 2018). The link between self-dehumanization and immoral behavior. Psychological Science, 29( 8), 1234-1246.
39	Kouchaki, M., & Smith, I. H . ( 2014). The morning morality effect: The influence of time of day on unethical behavior. Psychological Science, 25( 1), 95-102.
40	Lafollette, H . ( 2005). Living on a slippery slope. Journal of Ethics, 9( 3/4), 475-499.
41	Li A., Evans J., Christian M. S., Gilliland S. W., Kausel E. E., & Stein J. H . ( 2011). The effects of managerial regulatory fit priming on reactions to explanations. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 115( 2), 268-282.
42	Liu Y., Li S., Lin W., Li W., Yan X., Wang X., .. Ma Y . ( 2019). Oxytocin modulates social value representations in the amygdala. Nature Neuroscience, 22( 4), 633-641.
43	Maréchal M. A., Cohn A., Ugazio G., & Ruff C. C . ( 2017). Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114( 17), 4360-4364.
44	Mazar N., Amir O., & Ariely D . ( 2008). The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45( 6), 633-644.
45	Milgram, S . ( 1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Tavistock.
46	Moore, C . ( 2008). Moral disengagement in processes of organizational corruption. Journal of Business Ethics, 80( 1), 129-139.
47	Moore C., Detert J. R., Trevino L. K., Baker V. L., & Mayer D. M . ( 2012). Why employees do bad things: Moral disengagement and unethical organizational behavior. Personnel Psychology, 65( 1), 1-48.
48	Moscovici, S., & Zavalloni, M . ( 1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12( 2), 125-135.
49	Murphy S. E., Norbury R., O'Sullivan U., Cowen P. J., & Harmer C. J . ( 2009). Effect of a single dose of citalopram on amygdala response to emotional faces. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 194( 6), 535-540.
50	Noguchi, Y., & Oizumi, R . ( 2018). Electric stimulation of the right temporo-parietal junction induces a task-specific effect in deceptive behaviors. Neuroscience Research, 128, 33-39.
51	O'Connell, A., & Kouchaki, M . ( 2014). In the afternoon, the moral slope gets slipperier. Harvard Business Review, 92( 5), 34-35.
52	Rees M. R., Tenbrunsel A. E., & Bazerman M. H . ( 2019). Bounded ethicality and ethical fading in negotiations: Understanding unintended unethical behavior. Academy of Management Perspectives, 33( 1), 26-42.
53	Regan, J. W . ( 1971). Guilt, perceived injustice, and altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 18( 1), 124-132.
54	Reynolds, S. J . ( 2006). Moral awareness and ethical predispositions: Investigating the role of individual differences in the recognition of moral issues. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91( 1), 233-243.
55	Russell J. A., Weiss A., & Mendelsohn G. A . ( 1989). Affect grid: A single-item scale of pleasure and arousal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57( 3), 493-502.
56	Schauer, F . ( 1985). Slippery slopes. Harvard Law Review, 99( 2), 361-383.
57	Shalvi S., Handgraaf M. J. J., & de Dreu C. K. W . ( 2011). Ethical manoeuvring: Why people avoid both major and minor lies. British Journal of Management, 22( s1), S16-S27.
58	Shu L. L., Gino F., & Bazerman M. H . ( 2011). Dishonest deed, clear conscience: When cheating leads to moral disengagement and motivated forgetting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37( 3), 330-349.
59	Tang H. H., Zhang S., Jin T., Wu H. Y., Su S., & Liu C . ( 2019). Brain activation and adaptation of deception processing during dyadic face-to-face interaction. Cortex, 120, 326-339.
60	Tapp, C., & Occhipinti, S . ( 2016). The essence of crime: Contagious transmission from those who have committed moral transgressions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 55( 4), 756-772.
61	Tenbrunsel, A. E., & Messick, D. M . ( 2004). Ethical fading: The role of self-deception in unethical behavior. Social Justice Research, 17( 2), 223-236.
62	Teper R., Inzlicht M., & Page-Gould E . ( 2011). Are we more moral than we think? Exploring the role of affect in moral behavior and moral forecasting. Psychological Science, 22( 4), 553-558.
63	Volokh E (2003). The mechanisms of the slippery slope. Social Science Electronic Publishing, 116(4), 1026-1137.
64	Weisel, O., & Shalvi, S . ( 2015). The collaborative roots of corruption. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112( 34), 10651-10656.
65	Welsh D. T., Ordonez L. D., Snyder D. G., & Christian M. S . ( 2015). The slippery slope: How small ethical transgressions pave the way for larger future transgressions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100( 1), 114-127.
66	Wilkowski B. M., Ferguson E. L., Williamson L. Z., & Lappi S. K . ( 2018). ( How) Does initial self-control undermine later self-control in daily life? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44( 9), 1315-1329.
67	Yang W. Q., Jin S. H., He S., Fan Q., & Zhu Y. J . ( 2015). The impact of power on humanity: Self-dehumanization in powerlessness. PloS One, 10( 5), e0125721.
68	Yao, Z., & Yu, R . ( 2016). The spreading of social energy: How exposure to positive and negative social news affects behavior. Plos One, 11( 6), e0156062.
69	Yin, L. J., & Weber, B . ( 2019). I lie, why don't you: Neural mechanisms of individual differences in self-serving lying. Human Brain Mapping, 40( 4), 1101-1113.
70	Yoel I., Pizarro D. A., Thomas G., & Dan A . ( 2013). Moral masochism: On the connection between guilt and self- punishment. Emotion, 13( 1), 14-18.
71	Yuan H., Tabarak S., Su W., Liu Y., Yu J., & Lei X . ( 2017). Transcranial direct current stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex affects judgments of moral violations. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1812.

[1]	XIE Kai-Jie, MA Jia-Tao, HE Quan, JIANG Cheng-Ming. Descriptive norms promote willingness to voluntarily donate blood rather than actual blood donation [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2019, 27(6): 1019-1024.
[2]	WEN Peng, REN Xiaoya, CHEN Cheng. The impact of goal setting on unethical behavior: Boundary conditions and theoretical bases [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2017, 25(8): 1401-1410.
[3]	MAO Changguo. Regulatory focus theory: Application in organizational management research [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2017, 25(4): 682-690.
[4]	ZHANG Yan-Qing; WANG Xiao-Hui; WANG Hai-Bo. Unethical behaviors in organizational context: The explanation from moral disengagement theory [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2016, 24(7): 1107-1117.
[5]	WANG Caiyu; LEI Li. The Connotation, Mechanism and Corporate Response of Social Responsible Consumption [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2015, 23(7): 1245-1257.
[6]	WANG Xingchao;YANG Jiping;YANG Li. A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Moral Disengagement and Aggressive Behavior [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2014, 22(7): 1092-1102.
[7]	YANG Ji-Ping; WANG Xing-Chao; GAO Ling. Concept, Measurement and Related Variables of Moral Disengagement [J]. , 2010, 18(4): 671-678.
[8]	YAO Qi; YUE Guo-An. New Development in the Domain of Motivation: Regulatory Focus Theory [J]. , 2009, 17(6): 1264-1273.