The influence of Justifications and Power on Unethical Behavior

Does Power really corrupt?

The influence of Justifications and Power on Unethical Behavior

H. V. Profijt – Wouda 1911007 June, 2014

Master Thesis MSc Programme of Human Resource Management Faculty of Economics and Business

University of Groningen

Supervised by: MSc. S. Feenstra

Abstract

Unethical practices sometimes prevail when people are in a position of power (Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010), while other research shows that power increases ethical behavior in people (DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, & Cerancic, 2012). This raises the question why and under what conditions power leads to unethical behavior vs. ethical behavior. This study posits that power increases unethical behavior when power holders are given a justification for their behavior, while it decreases when no justification is available.

Justifications changes people's perceptions of what is ethical or unethical and thereby influence unethical behavior. In a dictator game, justification was manipulated and power was primed to test whether power increases unethical behavior when a justification is available.

No support was found for the hypothesis. Instead, results showed that power-primed individuals acted more ethical, whereas justification-manipulated individuals acted more unethical.

Keywords: power, unethical behavior, justification, moral awareness

The costs related to deviant behavior in the workplace, such as corporate fraud, employee theft, bullying and harassment, revenge, withholding job effort, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and the measures to prevent and correct them, are estimated in the billions of dollars (Kidwellt, & Martin, 2005). This indicates that unethical behavior in the workplace is highly prevalent and very costly for organizations and society as a whole. Power can increase unethical behavior and impact the functioning of an organization. There is a long list of power holders who abuse their power for self-gain. For example, Silvio Berlusconi used his political position to cover up the fact that he paid underaged girls for sex (Collins, 2013).

Even more illustrative is Enron, where highly-paid executives endangered the lives of people by power cut-offs to pocket millions of dollars (Sims, & Brinkman, 2003). However, power does not always corrupt. For example, Cynthia Cooper, who was head of the Worldcom's internal audit department became a whistleblower for the greatest accounting fraud in history (Velasquez, 2012). She expressed that she felt an obligation to report her findings. As the examples illustrate, power can influence people in different ways and result in ethical or unethical behavior. Thus, being better able to understand what causes people to engage in ethical or unethical behavior is important for the proper functioning of an organization and society as a whole.

Some research shows that power corrupts (Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010), while other research shows that power can increase ethical behavior (DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis,

& Ceranic, 2012). Research done by Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, and Otten (2013) showed

that power increases social distance. Power-holders experience more distance between them

and other people, which makes them more focused on their own needs and less likely to take

the perspective of other people, which may result in unethical behavior. To date, we know

little about why power-holders sometimes behave ethically, and why they sometimes behave

unethically. Most studies in the field of power have only focused on the corrupting effect of

power. So far, there has been little discussion about the positive effects of power on ethical

behavior. In addition, no research has been found that surveyed the role of power and

justifications on unethical behavior. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the role

of power and justifications on unethical behavior. By empirically examining the relationship

between power and justifications, organizations can be helped to reduce the cost of unethical

behavior. This knowledge may enhance the ability of companies to create a climate that

promotes ethical behavior, while minimizing the risk from potential unethical behavior. This

is important because power-holders have a lot of power and resources which they can allocate to their own desire. If ethical behavior can be elicited, organizations and the society as a whole can save billions of dollars. Moreover, by offering an explanation why people use justifications for unethical behavior, managers can be helped to create a surrounding in which errors in judgment and behavior are openly admitted and ethical behavior is encouraged.

Justifications are mental strategies people adopt to legitimize their unethical behavior (Ashforth, & Anand, 2003). Justifications help people to appear sensible while they serve their own interest. Justifications serve a goal; they allow one to act unethically while keeping a positive self-evaluation. Unethical practices tend to increase when a justification is given for the unethical behavior. According to Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf, and De Dreu (2011) the availability of a justification leads to more lying. In recent years there has been increasing interest in the role of unethical behavior. However, little attention has been paid to the influence of justifications and power on unethical behavior. This study expects the interaction between power and the availability of a justifications to manifest itself because justifications changes people's perceptions of what is ethical or unethical, and thereby influence unethical behavior. This is also described as moral awareness (DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, & Ceranic, 2012).

Moral awareness refers to recognition of the situation's moral content (DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, & Ceranic, 2012). Moral awareness can decrease unethical behavior, because an individual is more aware of the ethical implications of the situation. If a justification is available, moral awareness may be lowered. Reynolds (2006) highlights that the mere presence of a behavioral norm is inadequate to spark moral awareness, something must occur to make the norm vivid for the decision maker and salient in a ethical context. A justification can make the behavioral norm and ethical context less salient.

The main questions addressed in this paper are: a) ''Does power increase unethical behavior when a justification is provided?''; and b) ''Is the interaction effect between power and justification on unethical behavior mediated by moral awareness?''

The paper has been divided into five parts. The first part deals with discussing and

explaining key concepts of power, justification and moral awareness. The second part deals

with introducing the hypotheses and conceptual model. The third, fourth and fifth part will

describe the method, results and discussion respectively.

Literature Overview Power and (un-) Ethical Behavior

While a variety of definitions of the term power have been suggested, this paper uses the definition suggested by Galinsky Magee, Inesi, and Gruenfeld (2006) who define power as the capacity to influence other people through asymmetric control over valuable resources and the ability to administer rewards and punishment. According to Trevino, Weaver and Reynolds (2006) unethical behavior can be defined as behavior that violates ethical standards, benefits the self and comes at cost of other people. Ethical behavior will be defined in this paper as behavior that does not violate ethical standards, does not benefit the self and does not come at the cost of other people.

On the one hand, abundant research has shown that power corrupts. Power has been linked to objectification (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee, & Galinsky, 2008), aggression (Fast, Halevy, & Galinsky, 2013) and abusive behavior (Wiltermuth, & Flynn, 2013). Moreover, power can drive people to act in their own self-interest (Fast, Halevy, & Galinsky, 2013).

Other research showed that people in a position of power place greater importance on their own self-interest and subordinate those of others (DeCelles, de Rue, Margolis, & Cerancic, 2012). Previous research done by Lammers, Stapel, and Galinsky (2010) showed that power increases moral hypocrisy. That is, they showed that power holders place stricter moral standards on other people, while placing less strict moral standards on themselves. And it has been found that individuals with power advocated more severe punishment for employees who did not obey to the ethical standards of the workplace (Wiltermuth, & Flynn, 2013).

Abundant research has shown that power increases engagement in all sorts of unethical behavior. Power for example, has been identified as the underlying motive of sexual harassment (Popovich, & Warren, 2010). Furthermore, previous research has linked power to demeaning and aggressive tendencies, individuals with more power and a low status were more likely to chose demeaning activities for their partners (Fast, Halevy & Galinsky, 2013).

Power increases dehumanization (Gwinn, Judd, & Park, 2013). Dehumanization is defined as

perceiving others or acting towards others as if they were objects, particular animals or

automata (Haslam, 2006). Power is also associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend

how other people see, think and feel (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006; Woltin,

Corneille, Yzerbyt, & Forster, 2011). Under conditions of power, approach towards a social target is driven more by targets usefulness (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee, & Galinsky, 2008).

Social distance leads them to think in more abstract mental representations (Magee, & Smith, 2013). Thinking in more abstract representations about individuals can reduce thinking about them as persons. The needs of the less powerful become secondary to those of the power holder, which facilitates unethical behavior. These findings imply that power could strengthen unethical behavior.

On the other hand, research has shown that power can increase engagement in moral behavior as well, for instance, Chen, Lee-Chai and Bargh (2001) showed that power can reduce self-interested behavior among communal oriented individuals. Galinsky, Gruenfeld and Magee (2003) demonstrated that power increases an action orientation, and that action could have prosocial or antisocial consequences. Furthermore, Overbeck and Park (2001) showed that high-power individuals were better at remembering information about other individuals and recognizing distinctions among them. They explain this finding by the fact that power may foster a desire to excel in given tasks, which may spark a responsibility for performing. Accordingly, it could be argued that power may foster a sense of responsibility which may result in ethical behavior.

Therefore, nowadays scholars argue that power does not simply corrupt. Instead it depends on boundary conditions that moderate the relationship between power and unethical behavior. Lammers and colleagues, for instance showed that power only increases social distance if power is seen as legitimate (Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, & Otten, 2012). In addition, research has shown that moral identity moderates the relationship between power and unethical behavior such that individuals with a strong moral identity were less likely to act in self-interest (DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, & Cerancic, 2012). Moreover, research has shown that power only corrupts when the right accessibility mechanisms are not in place.

More specifically, power only corrupts people when they are not held accountable for their

decision making procedures (Pitesa, & Thau, 2013). Finally, Anderson and Galinsky (2006)

revealed that power leads to more risk-taking, but effect were attenuated when high-power

individuals felt a sense of responsibility. Given this effect of power on individuals' behavior it

is surprising that no empirical research has been conducted to study the effect of power

combined with the availability of a justifications. This paper aims to extend previous research

by examining the moderating role of the availability of a justification in explaining the

relationship between power and unethical behavior. The availability of a justification may moderate this relationship because a justification can serve as an excuse to legitimize ethically questionable behavior. Individuals in a position of power are more likely to act in their own self-interest if a justification is available for their behavior. Unethical behavior may increase because the power-holder has an excuse to rationalize their own behavior.

Justifications for (un-) Ethical Behavior

Justification is where a person, rather than assuming responsibility for an outcome, attempts to legitimize ethically questionable behavior (Vitell, Keith, & Mathur, 2011). The availability of a justification makes ethical concepts less readily available and can be seen as a rationalizing process to approve questionable behavior. Behaving unethical gives people a distressing feeling which can be reduced through the availability of a justification, thereby preserving an ethical self-concept. If a justification is provided, one's own unethical behavior is not perceived as unethical. This paper argues that when a justification is available for unethical behavior, people's perception of what is ethical or unethical is modified.

A considerable amount of literature has been published on the role of justifications for unethical behavior. The availability of a justification for unethical behavior has been linked to engaging in unethical behavior to attain group goals (Hoyt, Price, & Emrick, 2010), partner violence ( Neighbors et al, 2013) and lying for monetary gains (Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf &

de Dreu, 2011). The examples illustrate that having a justification for behavior can increase unethical behavior. Therefore, it could be argued that the availability of a justification changes people's perceptions of what is ethical or unethical and thereby influences unethical behavior.

The experience of power increases social distance (Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, &

Otten, 2013) which may result in feeling less close to other people and being unable to

empathize with other people's needs. Increased social distance may result in pursuing your

own goals, needs and desires which could produce unethical behavior. The availability of a

justification can make a ethical concept less readily available, and when combined with

power it could result in egocentric behavior. Therefore, it could be argued that power

combined with the availability of a justification may result in unethical behavior. Power and

the availability of a justifications are situational factors that increase social distance between

power-holders and other people, which could result in unethical behavior. Situational factors can diminish ethical standards and considerations, which may result in reduced moral awareness of the ethical content of the situation.

Moral Awareness

Throughout this paper the term moral awareness will be used to refer to recognition by an individual of a situation's ethical content (DeCelles, de Rue, Margolis, & Ceranic, 2012). Individuals' moral awareness can affect how people behave in certain situations. Some individuals intend to act unethically, while others simply do not recognize ethical aspects of a situation (Reynolds, 2006). Recognition of the ethical aspects of a situation is important because it makes an ethical decision apparent and stipulates ethical standards.

Although extensive research has been carried out on power, not a single study exists which covers the relationship between power, justification and moral awareness. A recent study by DeCelles, de Rue, Margolis, and Ceranic (2012) found that the experience of power enhances moral awareness among those with a strong moral identity, yet decreases moral awareness among those with a weak moral identity. Moral identity refers to mental representation of one's ethical character held internally as a cognitive schema, and expressed to others externally through one's actions (Acquino, & Reed, 2002). The study illustrates that feeling powerful combined with a less readily available cognitive schema of ethical behavior can result in more self-oriented behavior. Justifications can make ethical concepts less readily available, and as a result unethical behavior increases. Therefore this paper argues that the power and the availability of a justifications will decrease moral awareness, which in turn increases unethical behavior.

In line with this reasoning, we state the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The availability of a justification moderates the relationship between power and unethical behavior, such that power increases unethical behavior only when a justification for the unethical act is provided.

Hypothesis 2: The interactive effect between power and the availability of justifications on

unethical behavior will be mediated by an individual's moral awareness of the situation.

The conceptual model is graphically depicted in figure 1; it's components and relations are based on the previous sections.

Figure 1. Conceptual model of the relationship between power, justification, moral awareness and unethical behavior.

Method Participants and Design

One hundred and forty-four students studying at the Faculty Economics and Business

of the University of Groningen participated in this study (86 male and 58 female

participants). Participants were between 18 and 29 years of age with an average age of ( M =

21.20 years ; SD = 2.20 ). From the Dutch nationality there were 139 participants, three

participants had the German nationality and two participants specified their nationality as

'other'. The majority of the participants (45) studied Business, 17 participants studied

International Business, 13 participants studied Economics & Business Economics and the

other 69 participants studied something else. Participants were randomly assigned to one of

four experimental conditions in a 2 (high power: versus low) x 2 (justification : versus no

justification) design.

Procedure

The participants were recruited for a study about their views on society and upon arriving in the lab were put in separate cubicles. Participants were led to believe that they would be matched with another participant, who was actually fictitious, and that the answers given by about their views on society would be compared with that of the other participant.

Measures and Manipulations

Power manipulation. Power was manipulated by a word search task (Lammers, &

Stapel, 2009) which has shown to reliably manipulate a sense of power (Chen, Lee-Chai, &

Bargh, 2001). Participants were instructed to encircle eight words in a search-word task. For half of the participants four words were power-related (i.e control, influence, power and authority) and four were unrelated to power (i.e. house, clock, water and green). For the other half, four words were related to low power (i.e. secondary, powerless, dependent and submissive) and four words were unrelated to power (i.e. house, clock, water and green).

Unethical behavior. We adapted a dictator game to measure participants unethical behavior (Forsythe, Horowitz, Savin & Sephton, 1994 ; DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, &

Ceranic, 2012). Participants engaged in a dictator game in which they could win €100.,- in a lottery. Individual participants could divide six lottery tickets between themselves and the other participant. Participants were told that the more lottery tickets they owned, the higher the chance of winning the lottery. Participant could then decide how many lottery tickets they would take for themselves versus leave for the other. Thereby unethical behavior was measured, if the participants assigned more tickets for themselves than to the other participant, it was considered unethical. Participants who kept a few lottery tickets for themselves (between 0 and 3 lottery tickets) were considered ethical, participants who kept a great deal of lottery tickets for themselves (between 4 and 6 lottery tickets) were considered unethical.

Justification manipulation. The justification provided in this experiment was a

monthly income above €1000.,- of the other participant. During the study, participant were

asked to answer five demographic questions about their age, gender, income, nationality and

study. After that they received the same fictitious demographic information from the other

participant. For half of the participants the demographic information from the fictitious participant served as a justification ( i.e. the income from the other participant was above

€1000.,-). The high income of the other participant could serve as a cue to justify keeping all the lottery tickets for themselves. For the other half of the participant the demographic information did not serve as a justification ( i.e. the income from the other participant was below €200.,-). The low income of the other participant could not serve as a cue to justify keeping all the lottery tickets for themselves.

Moral awareness. The three-item scale from Reynolds (2006) was used to measure moral awareness of the participants with regard to the dictator game they participated in.

Participants first read an announcement about the formation of an Ethics Committee for the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEBEC). The memo announced the formation of an Ethics Committee by September 2014. The three-item moral awareness scale contained three statements, the first two statements were (''There are very important ethical aspects to this situation'' and ''This matter clearly does not involve ethics or ethical issues''). The third item measured ethical awareness more indirectly. The final item stated: ''I would definitely report this situation to the FEBEC''. Participants were asked how strongly they agreed with statements referring to the dictator game they just finished, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Cronbach's alpha was calculated at .64.

Manipulation check. Finally, participants were asked: ‘'Did you find anything strange or unusual about the experimental procedures''? ''Did you notice anything unusual about the word-search task?'' ''And what do you think is the purpose of this experiment''? Participants were then asked: ''Please indicate why you divided the lottery tickets as you did'' and 'Please indicate the income of the matched participant''. Finally participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.

Results Preliminary analysis

Prior to analysis, all variables were checked for deviations from the normal distribution and outliers.

Normal distribution. The dependent variable was not normally distributed (skewness

= .02 / kurtosis = - 1.33). A Shapiro- Wilk test verified that normality was not a reasonably assumption S - W (130) = .23, p < .01, CI [3.96 – 4.47]. A log transformation was performed on the dependent variable to improve normality. This transformation considerable improved normality (skewness = - .75. / kurtosis = .83). However, the Shapiro – Wilk test was still significant. An ANOVA analysis is robust against small deviations from normality (Moore, &

McCabe, 2009), so the researcher decided to keep the transformation on the dependent variable.

Outliers. Analyses were conducted to search for the cause of non-normality. Two participants were excluded because their score on the main dependent measure was an outlier ( > 2 SD from the group mean). According to van Selst and Jolicoeur (2007) values beyond 2 SD from the mean can be removed from the sample. Seven other participants were excluded as well because their score on the moral awareness questionnaire was an outlier ( > 2 SD from the group mean).

Manipulation checks. Five participants were excluded from this study because they were aware of the manipulation. Nine participants were excluded for failing to report the right income of the matched participant. These fourteen excluded participants distributed fairly even across conditions. In the remaining sample 33 participants were in the high power/justification condition, 34 participants in the high power/no justification condition, 30 participants in the low power/justification condition and 33 participants in the low power/no justification condition.

Descriptives. Descriptive statistics of the means, standard deviations and correlations

between tickets kept during the dictator game, power, justification, moral awareness, gender,

age and income are reported in Table 1. It can be seen from the data in Table 1 that the

distribution on tickets kept in the dictator game is flatter than a normal distribution with a

wider peak. Participants on average kept 4.22 tickets out of a possible range of 6 ( range 1 –

6, SD = 1.45). It can be observed from the data in Table 1 that there is a very weak negative

relationship between power and the amount of lottery tickets that participant keep for

themselves, and that there is a very weak positive relationship between justification and the

amount of lottery tickets that participant keep for themselves. It can also be observed from

Table 1 that there is a weak negative relationship between moral awareness, power,

justification, gender and age. With regards to the hypotheses, the correlations suggest that

there might be a relationship between power and the amount of lottery tickets that participant

keep for themselves, and justification and the amount of lottery tickets that participant keep for themselves. With regards to hypothesis 1, the correlation between power and justification is weak, so the availability of a justification might not moderate the relationship between power and unethical behavior. With regards to hypothesis 2, the weak negative correlation between power and justification suggest that an individual's moral awareness might mediate the interactive effect between power and the availability of a justification.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of tickets kept during the dictator game, power, justification, moral awareness, gender, age and income.

Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Tickets kept in dictator game

4.22 1.45 -

2. Power - - -.06 -

3. Justification - - .08 .03 -

4. Moral

Awareness 4.05 1.28 -.02 -.09 -.05 -

5. Gender - - .10 .04 -.21 .01 -

6. Age 21.19 2.17 -.05 -.10 .13 -.21 .08 -

7. Income €550.- €302.20 -.15 -.11 .05 -.04 .09 .20 -

Main Analysis

First the scores of participants on the three-item moral awareness scale from Reynolds

(2006) were combined to produce a general moral awareness score. On item of the scale was

reverse coded, so the researcher first recoded it before calculating the moral awareness score.

To test the hypothesis an ANOVA was conducted with the justification condition and power condition as independent variables and the number of lottery tickets kept by oneself as the dependent variable. Results from the ANOVA are reported in Table 2. Analysis revealed a main effect of power on unethical behavior F (1, 127) = 34.21, p < .01. Interestingly, higher power leads to more ethical behavior. Furthermore, a main effect of justification on unethical behavior was observed F (1, 127) = 36.33, p < .01. The results indicate that having a justification for one's behavior leads to more unethical behavior. Strong evidence of gender was found, when it was found that gender had a significant effect on ethical behavior F (1, 127) = 6.45, p < .01. This findings indicate that males behaved more unethical compared with females. Finally, the expected interaction between power and justification condition on unethical behavior was not significant F (1, 122) = 0.01, p = .92. Hypothesis 1, which states that the availability of justification will moderates the relationship between power and unethical behavior, is thus rejected.

Table 2.

ANOVA results of justification and power on unethical behavior.

F df p

Justification 36.33 127 < .01

Power 34.21 127 < .01

Furthermore, an ANOVA was conducted with justification condition and power condition as independent variables and moral awareness as dependent variable. Analysis revealed no main effect of power on moral awareness F (1, 122) = 0.88, p > .77. Moreover, no main effect of justification on moral awareness was found F (1, 122) = 0.10, p > .75.

On average, age had a significant effect on moral awareness F (1, 122) = 5.11, p < .01.

Interestingly, as people age, they become less aware of the ethical implications of the situation. Overall, the interaction between power and justification on moral awareness was not significant F (1, 122) = 1.88, p > .17. Hypothesis 2, which states that an individual's moral awareness of the situation will be mediated by power, is thus rejected.

The most striking result to emerge from the data is that power leads to more ethical

behavior, and having a justification for one's behavior leads to more unethical behavior.

Together, these results provide insights into the influence of power on ethical behavior and the influence of justifications on unethical behavior. In the next section, therefore, we move on to discuss these findings with regards to the literature and hypotheses.

Discussion Purpose, Hypothesis and Main Findings of the Study

Abundant research has shown that power corrupts (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee, &

Galinsky, 2008; Fast, Halevy, & Galinsky, 2013; Wiltermuth, & Flynn, 2013). On the other hand, research has shown that power can increase engagement in moral behavior as well (Chen, Lee-Chai & Bargh, 2001;Galinsky, Gruenfeld & Magee, 2003; Overbeck & Park, 2001). Clearly, power has a paradox effect on behavior. It is important to understand the paradox, and study the conditions under which power leads to ethical versus unethical behavior.

This paper has examined if the availability of a justifications would moderate the relationship between power and unethical behavior. The results of this study indicate that power does not increases unethical behavior only when a justification is provided. In fact, it was found that power leads to more ethical behavior. Furthermore, this study found that having a justification to act unethical increases people's engagement in unethical behavior.

The findings indicate that the availability of a justification for behavior leads to more unethical behavior. Another important findings was that males behaved more unethical compared to females.

Additionally, this study was set out to determine if the interactive effect between power and unethical behavior would be mediated by an individual's moral awareness of the situation. The results of this study do not show that an individual's moral awareness mediates the interactive effect between power and unethical behavior. An unanticipated finding was that age did have an effect on moral awareness. As people age, they become less morally aware of the situation. The results of this study will now be compared to the findings of previous work.

Findings of Previous Work

The results of this study show that power increases ethical behavior. The findings of this study are not consistent with Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee and Galinsky (2008) who showed that people in a position of power are more likely to objectify and use people to meet their own needs, implying that power plays an important role in the prevalence of unethical behavior. However, power has also been found to play a role in ethical behavior. A study done by Chen, Lee-Chai, and Bargh (2001) for instance showed that power primed communals responded in socially responsible ways, whereas power-primed exchangers acted more in line with their self-interest. Communal oriented individuals (individuals who act without any specific expectation of benefit in return) act different under conditions of power, compared with exchange oriented individuals (individuals who do expect a benefit in return). Power can thus be mentally associated with different expectations, and depending on the expectation of the individual, resulting in ethical or unethical behavior. A possible explanation for this result might be that participants might have been acting as part of a sense of duty or obligation.

When participants were asked why they divided the lottery tickets between themselves and the other participants as they did, most of those surveyed indicated that they wanted to make a fair division, which implies a sense of duty or obligation to divide things equally. Most research has shown that power corrupts; people act more self-interested because people in a position of power feel entitled to more. However, research has shown that power is also related to to a sense of responsibility. For example Overbeck and Park (2001) showed that high-power individuals were better at remembering information about other individuals and recognizing distinctions among them. Power in this study thus sparked a responsibility to perform well. Moreover, Handgraaf, van Dijk, Vermunt, Wilke and de Drue (2008) showed that high-power individuals behaved socially responsible when their opponent was completely powerless. Therefore, a possible explanation for this result is that the participants in this study felt responsible for their matched participant, and as a result, divided their lottery tickets equally.

Furthermore, the current study found that having a justification for behavior leads to

more unethical behavior. These findings of the current study are consistent with those of

Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf, and De Dreu (2011) who found that the availability of a

justification leads to more lying. These findings imply that unethical practices tend to

increase when a justification is given for the unethical behavior. This result may be explained

by the fact that when a justification is provided the distressing feeling of behaving unethically is reduced.

Another important finding was that males behaved more unethical compared to females. This study confirms that gender is associated with ethical behavior. In a study done by Wang and Calvano (2013) it was found that woman are generally more inclined to act ethically. A study done by Eisenberg, Zhou, and Koller (2003) showed that a feminine orientation predicted sympathy and perspective taking and which effected prosocial behavior.

This result may be explained by the fact that females are more inclined to take the perspective of another individual, thereby responding to the needs of the others, which results in ethical behavior.

This experiment did not detect any evidence of an interaction between an individual's moral awareness of the situation and power. A study by DeCelles, De Rue, Margolis, and Ceranic (2012) found that the experience of power enhances moral awareness among those with a strong moral identity, yet decreases moral awareness among those with a weak moral identity. This research did not detect any evidence of an interaction between power and justification on moral awareness. A possible explanation for this result may be that participants were not processing ethically relevant situational information. According to Haidt (2001) ethical judgments are automatically generated intuitions that lead to post hoc ethical reasoning. If individuals are not intuitively aware of the ethical implications of the situation, judgments about ethical situations could be based on false assumptions. This result may be explained by the fact that the ethical context was not salient enough.

In this study, age might have lowered moral awareness. In a study done by Lahat, Helwig, and Zelezo (2012) age related differences in ethical behavior were found. Adults, compared with teenagers and children, made more normative judgments. The findings of this study implicate that as people mature, they behave more ethical. The findings of the current study does not support this research. A possible explanation for the findings of the current study might be the small range of age of the participants, since most of the participant were between 19 and 23 years of age.

Practical and Theoretical Implications

The findings from this study make several contributions to the current literature. First,

the present study adds to the growing literature on power and ethical behavior and provides a potential new viewpoint besides 'power corrupts'. In the current study, a contradictory finding was found, pointing in the direction of social behavior. Power-holders might be focused on the consequences of their actions, thereby taking socially responsible decisions. It might be a sense of responsibility that motivates power-holders to act in a socially responsible way.

Second, the current study adds to the justification and ethical behavior literature. The evidence from this study suggest that justifications are used to rationalize unethical behavior.

By stressing the fact that people should take responsibility for their actions, the possible detrimental effect of justifications could be avoided, resulting in social responsible behavior.

Third, this study might have implications for the ethical decision making process. Individuals need to be intuitively aware of the ethical implications of the situation in order to make judgments about ethical situations. Features of an ethical situation thus need to be made salient. Moreover, by empirically examining the relationship between power and the availability of a justifications, organizations can be helped to reduce the cost of unethical behavior. If the responsibility that comes along with power is stressed it could decreases unethical behavior in the workplace and save organizations and society billions of dollars.

Strengths and Limitations

A strength of this study is the power manipulation, the researcher is confident that the power manipulation achieved it's intended effect since the same manipulation has been frequently used in past research (Bargh, Raymond, Pryor & strack, 1995; Chen, Lee-Chai Bargh, 2001; Lammers, & Stapel, 2009. Another strength of this study is related to the dictator game, all participant understood the concept of the dictator game and responded well to it.

A number of important limitations need to be considered. First, on possible limitation of this study is related to the sample characteristics. The sample may have differed from the population since this study used a convenience sample. Participants in this study were relatively young and highly-educated. Another possible limitation of this study is related to the believability of the matched participant. During the manipulation checks, a number of participants indicated that the didn't believe that they were matched with a real participant.

Participants weren't introduced to the other participant, which might have been the reason

why they didn't believe they were matched with a real person. These results therefore need to be interpreted with caution.

Future Research

Increasing attention has been given to the effect of power on ethical behavior. In the current study power has been linked to ethical behavior. Although these results differ from some published studies (Fast, Halevy, & Galinsky, 2013; DeCelles, de Rue, Margolis, &

Cerancic, 2012; Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010) they are consistent with those of Chen, Lee-Chai and Bargh, (2001); Galinsky, Gruenfeld and Magee, (2003); Overbeck and Park, (2001); Handgraaf, van Dijk, Vermunt, Wilke and de Drue, (2008) who showed that power can increase engagement in moral behavior as well. This research has raised many questions in need of further investigation. That is, further work might investigate if power related cues can activate socially activated goals, and under what conditions power may lead to ethical behavior. Future studies might also investigate if a sense of responsibility combined with power can lead to ethical behavior. Future studies on the topic are therefore recommended.

Conclusion

This paper has examined the role of justifications and power and their effect on ethical

behavior and moral awareness. The main goal of the current study was to determine if a

justification given to an individual would moderate the relationship between power and

unethical behavior, and if the interactive effect between power and unethical behavior would

be mediated by an individual's moral awareness of the situation. This study has found that

power generally leads to ethical behavior, and that the availability of a justification generally

leads to unethical behavior. The evidence from this study suggests that power decreases self-

interested behavior and justification increases self-interested behavior. This study highlights

that power is a complex construct and has now been linked to ethical behavior. There is more

work to be done to investigate the effect of power and the availability of justifications on

(un-) ethical. It is recommended to explore this effect further, and investigate the effect of

power and the availability of justifications on individuals' behavior, and their effect on (un-)

ethical behavior and organizations.

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