College of Business, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States of America.
Lerner College of Business & Economics, The University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 23;15(3):e0229124. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229124. eCollection 2020.
Extant research suggests that individuals employ traditional moral heuristics to support their observed altruistic behavior; yet findings have largely been limited to inductive extrapolation and rely on relatively few traditional frames in so doing, namely, deontology in organizational behavior and virtue theory in law and economics. Given that these and competing moral frames such as utilitarianism can manifest as identical behavior, we develop a moral framing instrument-the Philosophical Moral-Framing Measure (PMFM)-to expand and distinguish traditional frames associated and disassociated with observed altruistic behavior. The validation of our instrument based on 1015 subjects in 3 separate real stakes scenarios indicates that heuristic forms of deontology, virtue-theory, and utilitarianism are strongly related to such behavior, and that egoism is an inhibitor. It also suggests that deontic and virtue-theoretical frames may be commonly perceived as intertwined and opens the door for new research on self-abnegation, namely, a perceived moral obligation toward suffering and self-denial. These findings hold the potential to inform ongoing conversations regarding organizational citizenship and moral crowding out, namely, how financial incentives can undermine altruistic behavior.
现有研究表明，个体采用传统的道德启发式来支持他们观察到的利他行为；然而，这些发现在很大程度上仅限于归纳推断，并且在这样做时依赖于相对较少的传统框架，即组织行为学中的义务论和法律与经济学中的美德理论。鉴于这些框架以及功利主义等竞争道德框架可以表现为相同的行为，我们开发了一种道德框架工具——哲学道德框架衡量工具（PMFM）——以扩展和区分与观察到的利他行为相关和不相关的传统框架。我们的工具基于 3 个独立真实场景中的 1015 个主体进行验证，表明启发式的义务论、美德理论和功利主义形式与这种行为密切相关，而利己主义则是一种抑制剂。它还表明，道义论和美德理论框架可能被普遍认为是交织在一起的，并为自我否定的新研究打开了大门，即对痛苦和自我否定的感知道德义务。这些发现有可能为正在进行的关于组织公民身份和道德排挤的对话提供信息，即财务激励如何破坏利他行为。
