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Moral Disengagement Through Displacement of Responsibility: The Role of Leadership Beliefs
Author(s) -
HINRICHS KIM T.,
WANG LEI,
HINRICHS ANDREW T.,
ROMERO ERIC J.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00869.x
Subject(s) - psychology , disengagement theory , moral disengagement , social psychology , displacement (psychology) , moral responsibility , social cognitive theory , cognition , action (physics) , epistemology , gerontology , medicine , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , psychotherapist
The present study examined the relationship between a person's leadership beliefs and the propensity to justify his or her unethical behavior by shifting responsibility to those people in leadership positions who ordered or condoned the behavior. Theoretical support for this relationship comes from the moral disengagement branch of social cognitive theory, which proposes that one cognitive mechanism people employ to justify unethical behavior involves displacing responsibility for their action onto someone else (Bandura, 1999b). The study's results revealed that leadership self‐efficacy, affective and noncalculative motivation to lead, and shared orientation toward leadership were related to moral disengagement through the displacement of responsibility.