(The) impact of moral disengagement on unethical behavior

Abstract

Moral disengagement consists of a set of cognitive mechanisms that decouple an individual’s internal ethical standards, enabling one to behave unethically without feeling attendant distress. Prior studies have shown that moral disengagement leads to unethical decision making and many researchers tried to find variables that could attenuate this relationship. In this article, we investigate whether charitable giving can moderate the relationship between moral disengagement and actual unethical behavior. A survey study conducted online revealed a positive correlation between moral disengagement and unethical behavior and showed a moderating effect of the frequency of giving to charity on this relationship. Based on these findings, we suggest that even if one is more likely to disengage from one’s internal moral standards, the more frequently one gives to charity, the more likely one will act less unethically when faced with an ethical dilemma. Moreover, the current research contributes to the ethics literature by introducing charitable giving as a moderator of the relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior.