BazermanMoore

134 Chapter 7: Fairness and Ethics in Decision Making
repercussions for human life, although it can be difficult to anticipate exactly what they
will be. The inference the Dalai Lama draws is that limiting human population growth
is a responsible way to affirm the sacredness of the lives already on the Earth.
Tetlock, Peterson, and Lerner (1996) point out that, under some circumstances,
people are usually willing to compromise on values that they regard as sacred. For instance,
the Dalai Lama’s concern for the living comes at the expense of the potential
lives that birth control will prevent. It is also often the case that we must consider tradeoffs
between ‘‘sacred issues’’ (such as the value of life) and what Tetlock, Kristel,
Elson, Green, and Lerner (2000) call ‘‘secular issues’’ (such as the value of money).
Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, and Lerner (2000) examined how people deal with the
wrenching conundrum of considering tradeoffs that invite them to compromise on their
sacred values. The most common responses were what the authors refer to as ‘‘moral
outrage’’ and ‘‘cleansing.’’ For instance, their respondents expressed moral outrage at
the very idea of allowing markets in which human body parts, babies, or sexual favors
would be bought and sold. In response, they engaged in mental cleansing rituals that
involved distancing themselves from the reprehensible idea they had been asked to
consider and agreeing to volunteer their time to work on more morally acceptable
alternatives.
Without a doubt, moral judgments are often strongly associated with powerful
emotional reactions. People usually assume that these emotions follow moral assessments.
However, Haidt (2001, 2007) presents compelling evidence that, in fact, it is
more common for the opposite to occur. That is, what is distinctive about moral issues
is that they produce emotional reactions and that these reactions then drive our more
cognitive assessments. Some of Haidt’s strongest evidence comes from situations in
which people react to an issue with emotions that they cannot explain or justify, but that
nevertheless guide their decisions.
For instance, Haidt, Björklund, and Murphy (2007) offered their participants $2 to
sign a form that read, ‘‘I hereby sell my soul, after my death, to Scott Murphy [the
experimenter], for the sum of two dollars.’’ At the bottom of the page, a printed note
read: ‘‘This is not a legal or binding contract.’’ Participants were told that they could
keep the signed form as well as the $2 and that they could do whatever they liked with
the form, including tearing it up, since it was meaningless and they were not actually
selling their souls. Nevertheless, 77 percent of participants—even many of those who
claimed not to believe in the existence of souls—refused the chance to make $2 in
thirty seconds. When asked to explain their refusal, participants could not articulate a
sensible explanation beyond the fact that they simply didn’t want to sign the contract.
Here, as elsewhere, moral objections were driven primarily by emotion rather than by
reason.
CONCLUSION
Throughout the scandals that have scarred corporate America in recent years, the U.S.
government has consistently tried to blame a few ‘‘bad apples’’ for the crisis. Yet when
we examine each scandal, it becomes clear that it would not have been possible for just
a few people to create the problems if others around them had behaved ethically. From