Priming Ethicality

Francesca Gino and Cassie Mogilner have superficially shown a link between time, money and morality as such that shifting the focus of life onto time rather than on the normative focus of money leads to greater self-reflection and therefore a greater sense of morality and a lesser chance of an individual performing unethical actions. Thus through their experiments, they conclude that triggering the concept of time in subjects reduces cheating behaviour due to the element of self- reflection, therefore discovering a way to curb dishonesty.

The experiments conducted by Gino and Mogilner do prove a valuable hypothesis, however the methodology used can be critiqued. The use of ‘priming’ subjects as done in all experiments can be seen to be limiting, as it is the perceptual identification of words and objects, triggered to present a particular representation of either time or money in the subjects (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2010.) This method results in unconvincing evidence as Daniel Kahneman has discussed; priming is an unjust experiment method as it is a way of manipulating a situation, to gain a desired result; it is not a way of obtaining the natural thoughts and moral actions of a person (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2010). Thus, the method cannot be seen to present a complete reasoning for their hypotheses, that encouraging subjects to self reflect and be conscious of their own selves will cause them to act in a more ethical and moral manner (Psychological Science, 2014.)

Daniel Kahneman proposes an alternative methodology, “daisy chain”, which could be used in future experiments in the same field (Trends in Cognitive Science, 2010.) This method is claimed to restore credibility to psychological experimentation by trying ...

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...the focus of life onto time rather than on the normal focus of money leads to greater self-reflection and therefore a greater sense of morality and a lesser chance of an individual performing unethical actions. However, as seen in this discussion this link is indeed weak as the methodology used can be heavily critiqued and the alternate method ‘daisy chain’ established by Daniel Kahneman would be advised for use in further studies in the field (Trends in Cognitive Science, 2010.) The link established does have important applications however as established the results could be better defined with a broader understanding of the causation of outcomes, such terms as ‘bounded ethicality’ and ‘ethical dissonance’ both giving more convincing evidence and reasoning than those presented by Gino and Mogilner in their 2014 experiments (The Social Psychology of Morality, 2012.)