Unpacking the Impact of Gratitude on Unethical Behavior

ABSTRACT

Understanding and preventing unethical behavior is essential for social welfare. Prior research has shown that emotional processes have consequential effects on such behavior. The current work aims to unravel the mixed findings relating positive emotion to unethical behavior by suggesting that feeling gratitude may differentially influence one’s ethicality through three distinct pathways: cognitive (moral disengagement), motivational (greed), and relational (felt-security). Through our propositions, we advance a conceptual model for investigating the relationships among general positive emotion, gratitude, and unethical behavior, to gain clarity on these important connections. More broadly, researchers could use our model to illuminate a range of pathways linking gratitude and unethical behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• Positive emotion
• Unethical behavior
• Moral disengagement
• Greed
• Felt-security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is based partly on Junho Oh’s doctoral dissertation conducted at the School of Business and Technology Management at KAIST under the supervision of Sujin Lee; the research received financial support from the School.

Notes on contributors

Junho Oh

Junho Oh is a PhD student in the Department of Business and Technology Management, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His research focuses on topics such as unethical behavior, gratitude, and sense of power.

Ye Kang Kim

Ye kang Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Business Management, Hongik University. She received her Ph.D. in Management from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on topics such as creativity, gratitude, and job crafting. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and American Journal of Psychology.

Guihyun Park

Guihyun Park is an Associate Professor of Management in the Research School of Management, Australian National University. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University. Her research interests include how people react to team members’ ideas and contributions; how a team, which consists of individuals, develops its own dynamics; and how intergroup relations and intragroup dynamics co-evolve over time. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Academy of Management Discoveries, American Psychologists, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Sujin Lee

Sujin Lee is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the School of Business and Technology Management, KAIST. She received her Ph.D. in Management from Cornell University. Her work on creativity, negotiation, ethical decision-making has been published in leading journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, International Journal of Project Management, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.