How Groups Encourage Misbehavior

Kevin Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000388589
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sviluppo organizzativo
• Index: Business

How Groups Encourage Misbehavior explores the psychological and social processes by which groups develop a tolerance for and even encourage misbehavior. Drawing from decades of research on social, cognitive and organizational psychology, as well as a deep well of historical research, this book shows how commitment to groups, organizations and movements can turn moral individuals into amoral agents.

Pulling together what have been traditionally distinct areas of study, How Groups Encourage Misbehavior provides a detailed and unified account of how good organizations go bad and how groups of all types can push otherwise honest and upright individuals to behave in ways that violate laws and social norms. This text describes how social norms, rationalization, the characteristics of formal and informal groups, attachment to groups and organizations, and the structure of organizational life can all contribute to misbehavior. Each chapter includes one or more sidebar discussions of relevant and interesting examples to illustrate the ways groups and organizations encourage and support misbehavior. The final two chapters discuss how many of these same attributes and processes can be used to encourage positive behaviors and foster recovery from dysfunctional and corrupt cultures and modes of behavior.

A valuable text for a broad range of psychology courses, How Groups Encourage Misbehavior will especially appeal to practitioners, scholars, and students interested in ethics in organizations and the intersection between social psychology and organizational behavior.

Part I

The Psychology of Misbehavior

1
Misbehavior: The Role of Persons and Situations

July 1863, New York City

It was the second day of the newly instituted draft in New York City, and angry crowds gathered in front of the office of the Provost Marshal. The Civil War was deeply unpopular in New York, especially among the immigrants who had flooded the city. They bitterly resented the war, in part because they were competing with Blacks for jobs, a competition that would become even more desperate if freed slaves were added to the mix. The fact that immigrants were subject to the draft, but Blacks were not (Black soldiers were only grudgingly accepted into the Union Army and were not drafted for service), only added fuel to the fire.

Tempers flared, and soon paving stones were coming through the windows. What started as a draft riot quickly morphed into a full-scale race riot. Over the next three days, raging mobs hunted down and killed over 100 Black men, women, and children, lynching many and burning others alive. Black-owned homes and businesses were destroyed, with over $20 million (in current dollars) in damage. In one of the worst outrages during this riot, the Colored Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue was burned to the ground. Over 4,000 Union troops had to be pulled out of the Battle of Gettysburg to quell the riot.

What turned a protest against the draft into a three-day orgy of violence directed against Black men, women, and children in New York? Why did men (and sometimes women), who in their day-to-day lives in New York would never have assaulted Black citizens or attacked their homes and businesses, turn into a howling mob that has to be put down by the army? One answer is that several social forces can unleash the worst in people. The theme of this book is that there are several aspects of groups and organizations that can encourage, magnify, and sustain patterns of behavior that are harmful; that violate rules, norms, and laws; and that tear at the very social fabric groups, social movements, and organizations supposedly create and protect.

Sometimes, misbehavior is a simple reflection of an individual’s depravity, incapacity, or unwillingness to behave appropriately. Indeed, some of the most serious forms of misbehavior are committed by individuals acting alone (e.g., serial killers almost always work alone). Even when an individual is acting in the presence of others, their behavior might still be driven by individual beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and personality traits. However, when we look into the causes of a wide range of different behaviors that harm others or break rules and norms, social forces often loom large as explanations. For example, some of the most destructive forms of misbehavior, such as war crimes, mob violence, and the like, are almost always done in and by groups. Several less extreme forms of misbehavior are often a direct product of social-psychological forces, ranging from stereotypes to misperceptions of others’ intentions and behaviors to the formation and communication of group norms that lead people to act in ways that harm others and that undermine social institutions.

What Do We Mean by Misbehavior?

This book focuses on the social-psychological forces that contribute to, support, or lead people to tolerate misbehavior. It is important, therefore, to define “misbehavior”. First, this book is concerned with behavior—that is, things individuals do. So, having subversive thoughts and beliefs or unusual opinions and preferences is not a form of misbehavior, although in some cases acting on those or trying to influence others to adopt these same beliefs might constitute misbehavior. Second, misbehavior involves violating broadly accepted laws, norms, and societal values. The term “broadly accepted” is important here; there may be laws or social norms that are highly specialized or localized, in the sense that behaviors that violate them would not normally be met with disapproval or seen as wrong. For example, it is a federal crime (Federal Table of Misdemeanours 18:§46) to transport water hyacinths. There are places where this plant can be invasive or can clog waterways, and a case can be made for this federal law, but few of us would think of a person transporting this plant (especially a person unaware of its potential ecological harm in particular circumstances) as a criminal act. Third, misbehavior has the potential to be destructive or harmful, sometimes harming others directly and sometimes creating harm by undermining social institutions. Misbehavior runs the gamut from simple incivility and low-level bullying to gang violence and war crimes.

Of the three characteristics already cited, the fact that misbehavior violates widely accepted laws, rules, and norms is most important and, in many ways, most paradoxical. One of the primary functions of society and the various units of society (e.g., families, social groups, organizations, legal structures) is to define rules, norms, and expectations—that is, to lay out definitions of what is acceptable and what is expected. Misbehavior breaks these rules and laws and violates these norms, and yet misbehavior is often the direct result of social and normative processes. The key to understanding this apparent paradox is to understand that social influences almost always involve information. That is, one of the key functions of social groups is to help their members understand what is and what should be. Social groups influence an individual’s behavior by providing information that reduces uncertainty (what is; see, for example, Hogg, 2007) and by providing information about what behaviors are and are not acceptable (what should be). This information often leads people to believe that their behaviors (including misbehaviors) are acceptable and consistent with norms and expectations.

One of the recurring themes that emerge from interviews of individuals who have been caught engaging in misbehavior is that they rarely believe they were doing something wrong. Rather, misbehavior is very often the product of a set of social and cognitive processes that lead people to believe that behaviors that appear to violate laws, rules, and norms are acceptable or even laudable. For example, interviews with war criminals often reveal that they did not think they were doing anything wrong, but rather that they were serving some higher cause that justified their actions (Bohr, Meyer, & Wiegrefe, 2014). Similarly, interviews with members of organized crime syndicates often emphasize themes such as family, brotherhood, and loyalty and show how criminal acts are often recast as part of the process of upholding these values (Rostami, Mondani, Liljeros, & Endling, 2018). In the same vein, people who engage in sexual harassment, bullying, or workplace incivility rarely think of themselves in negative terms. One of the central challenges of this book is to develop an understanding of how social groups, organizations, movements, and the like influence the perceptions and beliefs of individuals to allow and encourage them to engage in behaviors that violate widely accepted laws, rules, and norms.

Persons and Situations as Causes of Misbehavior

Most behaviors are a product of a combination of attributes of the person (e.g., abilities, personality traits, beliefs, perceptions) and the aspects of the situation that make particular behaviors more or less likely (Mischel, 1999; Weiss & Adler, 1984). For example, situations sometimes give people strong cues about how they should act and the range of acceptable behaviors (Meyer & Dalal, 2009; Meyer, Dalal, & Hermida, 2010). When a traffic light is red, people usually stop. At a funeral, people rarely play practical jokes or sing comic songs. At other times, situations may only weakly signal what behaviors are desired or expected. For example, people are often confused about precisely what they should do when a traffic light is yellow. Situations might make particular behaviors possible or impossible; you might want to bake a cake, but if there is no sugar in the house, you might not be able to. Situations might present easy opportunities to engage in behaviors that you would ordinarily avoid; if you have ever been in a bakery while on a diet, you will understand how strongly environmental cues can tempt you to break the diet. Numerous theories of motivation and behavior start with the assumption that to understand people’s behavior, it is useful to consider both persons and situations as possible causes or influences (Ekehammar, 1974).

Like most other behaviors, misbehavior is influenced by both the characteristics of the person and the characteristics of the situation (Furnham & Taylor, 2004; Lefkowitz, 2009; Treviño, 1986). In this book, I will focus most strongly on one form of situational effects—that is, the effects of social influences on misbehavior. This is not to deny that other non-social aspects of the situation might encourage misbehavior. For example, if your boss were to tell you, “Could you put this large bag of rubies in the safe? I have not had time to count them, and I don’t have a clear idea of how many I have”, the temptation to help yourself to a few rubies might be so strong as to entice you to steal. However, social influences do create a special set of problems in studying misbehavior, because they often act in a way that will convince you that behaviors that would usually be met with disapproval are instead acceptable and perhaps even desirable.

Before launching into a detailed examination of the way groups and organizations influence misbehavior, it is useful to briefly review how several characteristics and attributes to persons contribute to misbehavior.

Person-Based Explanations for Misbehavior

Person-based explanations for misbehavior have been widely studied and debated. For example, many studies of misbehavior in the workplace (e.g., employee theft, violation of workplace rules or norms) have paid particular attention to workers’ personality traits, attitudes, and beliefs. Misbehavior in the workplace is often explained in terms of constructs such as employee reliability (Hogan & Hogan, 1989), theft proneness (Ash, 1991), socialization (Collins & Bagozzi, 1999; Gough, 1960), conscientiousness and integrity (Hogan & Ones, 1997; Hough, Eaton, Dunnette, Kamp, & McCloy, 1990; Murphy, 1993). This research often has had direct practical application. For example, paper-and-pencil tests designed to measure conscientiousness and integrity have shown considerable success in reducing employee theft, disciplinary actions, substance abuse, and other types of misbehavior in the workplace (Jones, 1980; Jones, Slora, & Boye, 1990; Kobbs & Arvey, 1993; Ones, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, 1993; Sackett, Burris, & Callahan, 1989; Werner, Jones, & Steffy, 1989). Four individual difference constructs (conscientiousness, thrill-seeking, psychopathy, envy and emotions) have been widely used to predict and explain misbehavior.

Conscientiousness

The personality trait conscientiousness is one of five constructs that are widely used to describe normal personality. The Five-Factor model suggests that personality can be described in terms of five key attributes—conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability (often described in terms of the low end of the stability scale, neuroticism), extraversion, and openness to experience. Conscientiousness itself is sometimes described as a personality trait characterized by being careful and diligent. Individuals who score low on measures of conscientiousness are at higher risk for a wide range of misbehaviors (Murphy, 1993).

Analyses of measures of conscientiousness suggest that this personality attribute reflects six separate but related groups of behaviors—competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and deliberation. People who are high on conscientiousness are likely to follow rules and carefully carry out their assigned duties and roles (Hogan & Hogan, 1989; Hogan & Ones, 1997; Ones et al., 1993). It is no surprise, therefore, that conscientious people are likely to be evaluated as good performers in a wide variety of jobs (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Indeed, conscientiousness is one of the few individual difference variables that is correlated with performance in virtually all jobs; general cognitive ability is one of the others (Schmidt & Hunter, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Part I The Psychology of Misbehavior
• Part II The Workplace as a Focal Point for Understanding Misbehavior
• Part III Positive Behavior in Organizations
• Epilogue
• Index