Survey and experimental study demonstrates increased ethical compromise in individuals with a calculative mindset, indicating that moral disengagement mediates profit-driven rule breaking.
People often need to weigh the trade-off between obtaining economic/status benefits and complying with moral standards in their daily lives. Once individuals make ethical compromises, they will abandon moral principles to obtain economic/status benefits. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the risk factors and mechanisms that induce ethical compromise. Using questionnaires (Study 1, Study 2), we found that calculative mindset is positively associated with individuals' moral disengagement, which corresponded with a tendency to make economic/status ethical compromises. Using experimental methods (Study 3), we found that calculative mindset increases individuals' moral disengagement, leading to a willingness to accept immoral help from others. This indicates that reducing people's calculative mindset will help reduce ethical compromises.
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Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.
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