Moral Neutralization and Counterproductive Behavior

Abstract

For over a century, scholars have theorized that rationalization protects people from experiencing psychic distress when they engage in immoral behavior. A core tenet of both neutralization theory and moral disengagement theory is that antisocial actors mitigate the guilt associated with their harmful behavior by invoking rationalizing attitudes. An abundance of research in both literatures demonstrates that people who are more likely to invoke such rationalizing attitudes are more likely to engage in deviant behavior. The findings of this dissertation confirm that scores on measures of moral disengagement and neutralization are strongly correlated, exhibit similar relationships with other variables, and tap into a broad moral neutralization construct. Moral neutralization is associated with counterproductive behavior across a range of settings, even when several other personality variables are controlled for, and in some cases, even when respondents distort their responses to appear desirable. Moral neutralization incrementally predicts counterproductive behavior after controlling for integrity, a similarly valid and conceptually similar trait. Although much more work needs to be done to achieve a thorough understanding of moral neutralization, particularly as it relates to moral neutralization measurement, these findings suggest that moral neutralization may be of use to practitioners who desire to minimize counterproductive behavior in their organizations.