Relationship between Students' Attitudes toward Hypothetical Marketing Moral Dilemmas and Three Moral Emotions: Total Guilt, Post-transgressional Guilt and Anticipatory Guilt.

• Author: Malinowski, Carl

INTRODUCTION

What are the educational implications of Browning's (2003) study that found that over 70% of research participants thought it was "very important" that a company be run "according to its values and a strong code of ethics"? (p. 69). There are at least two: (1) ethics education should start at the undergraduate level and (2) it should continue in graduate school. These education institutions are well served by primary research that looks at the current state of ethical attitudes of undergraduate and graduate students. The present study seeks to add to this body of knowledge by determining whether or not there is a relationship between guilt and ethical attitudes about marketing. Ethics is taught to our students as a boost toward long term business success. It may also give multinational organizations a global advantage over their competitors.

Guilt, also known as moral emotion, might help us understand who the current honest students are, as well as who the future honest business managers will be. A poor score on a guilt measure could be associated with a poor score on a measure of professional integrity. If these variables are correlated, then employees low on total, post-transgressional and anticipatory guilt could also be low in adhering to their company's code of conduct. These moral emotionally challenged workers would then be candidates for moral education workshops to improve their ethical sensitivity. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between students' attitudes to nine hypothetical marketing moral dilemmas and three moral emotions: (1) total guilt, (2) post-transgressional guilt and (3) anticipatory guilt.

According to Baumeister, Stillwell and Heatherton (1994) guilt is "an individual's unpleasant emotional state associated with possible objections to his or her action, inaction... or intention" (p. 245). In orthodox Freudian theory (see Schultz & Schultz, 2012), the personality structure known as the superego represents an internalization of parental moral values which represent society's virtues. Guilt feelings from the part of the superego known as the conscience result when the individual has improper thoughts and emotions.

The empirical evidence that people vary in guilt feelings will be presented below as both secondary and primary data. Peloza, White and Shang (2013) help us understand this variable when they state that "guilt arises when a person falls short of his or her own personal self standards" (p. 106).

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The present investigation looks at possible correlations between students' guilt feelings and their responses to a variety of hypothetical marketing moral dilemmas. The following combination of features distinguishes this study from previous scholarship in the area of guilt and ethical attitudes: (1) the emphasis is on marketing dilemmas rather than on other management issues, (2) all three components of the tri-component model of attitudes are studies (thought, feeling and action tendency), (3) guilt is measured three ways (total guilt, post-transgressional guilt and anticipatory guilt), (4) students in different business majors are studied (accounting, finance, management and marketing), (5) both graduate and undergraduate students volunteered, (6) the undergraduates included freshmen through seniors and (7) both campuses of the participating university were included.

PRIOR RESEARCH RELATING MEASURES OF MORALITY TO EACH OTHER

Moral Knowledge and Moral Behavior

Hartshorne, May and Shuttleworth (1930) looked for relationships between deception and moral knowledge. For three different populations they obtained correlations between honesty and moral knowledge. Knowing something is wrong was related to a decreased likelihood in doing it.

Moral Judgment and Moral Behavior

In their study of male undergraduates, Malinowski and Smith (1985) found that undergraduate men who had lower principles morality scores (as measured by Rest's Defining Issues Test) cheated more and began to cheat sooner than males with higher moral reasoning scores. Others finding a relationship between moral judgment and moral conduct were Dunivant (1976); Harris, Mussen and Rutherford (1976); Kohlberg (1963); Krebs and Rosenwald (1977); Leming (1978); Saltzstein, Diamond and Belenky (1972); Schwartz, Feldman, Brown and Heingartner (1969) and Taylor and Walker (1977, in Santrock, 2005). More recently Chang and Yen (2007) studied Taiwanese executive MBA students. They found that students" with a high level of moral development exhibited less of a tendency to continue an unprofitable project than those with a lower level of moral development" (p. 347).

Moral Judgment and Moral Attitudes

Logsdon, Thompson and Reid (1994) found that the higher one's level of moral judgment, the less likely one was to approve of social piracy. Everett, Thorne and Danehower (1996) found that level of cognitive moral development is correlated with positive attitudes about female executives. Sparks and Merenski (2000) found a positive relationship between moral reasoning and the "ability to cognitively assume the perspective of others" (p. 369). Mason and Mudrack (1997) found a negative correlation between principled moral insight and "agreement that organizational interests legitimately supercede those of the wider society" (p. 1314). Schwepker (1999) found a negative correlation between moral judgment and interest in behaving unethically. Rogers and Smith (2001) found that ethical stage of development was associated with ethical responses to a scenario in which the company comptroller decides to falsify records.

HYPOTHESES

Malinowski and Smith (1985) also found that cheating was related to anticipatory guilt. More anticipatory guilt was related to less cheating. Others finding a negative relationship between cheating and guilt were Cocking (1969); Grinder and McMichael (1963); MacKinnon (1938); Rebelsky, Allinsmith and Grinder (1963); Smith, Ryan and Diggins (1972) and Unger (1962).

Kohlberg (1969) said that cognitive and affective aspects of morality are related: "Guilt in its most precise sense is...