New research published from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is asking whether people chronically believe they are “holier” than others or “less evil” than them. That’s some pretty heavy stuff coming from one of the world’s most prestigious business schools.
The study, conducted by Nicholas Epley and Nadav Klein, is titled “Less Evil Than You: Bounded Self-Righteousness in Character Inferences, Emotional Reactions, and Behavioral Extremes.” the study was published in the most recent Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The two Chicago Booth professors conducted four experiments that explored how people judge themselves compared to other people in a variety of contexts. In the end, the experiments showed that participants believed that they are less evil than others, but no more moral than them. Klein and Epley call this finding “asymmetric self-righteousness”.
“In countries where corruption is more common, the asymmetry in self-righteousness might be more pronounced because people will be more likely to observe unethical behavior committed by other people,” they said in the paper.
Why is this study important to the business world? Klein and Epley think that this research has notable implications for the promotion of ethics policies and procedures within organizations. For example, people are likely to resist policies aimed at preventing their own unethical behavior, simply because they don’t believe they would ever do anything unethical.
“Understanding asymmetric self-righteousness could help foster support for policies that can create more ethical people, and more ethical organizations,” they said.
The research suggests that framing policies as promoting ethical behavior rather than discouraging unethical behavior might be more effective in increasing policy support.
Home to the nation’s first Executive MBA program, Chicago Booth is one of the premiere business schools in the country. The second oldest business school in the U.S., Booth offers full-time, Evening, Weekend, and Executive MBA programs. Read more about the school’s various MBA offerings here.