Outsider Witnesses Prompted Ethical Behavior

The presence of outsiders when a "bad apple" acted unethically caused other group members to try to make up for the person's choices, probably due to guilty feelings, according to a journal article.

Business researchers Francesca Gino, Jun Gu, and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of North Carolina ran studies on small groups of students. In the first, each subject completed a survey and then decided how much of $10 to divide with an unknown person in another room. What the subjects did not know was that three people in their room were working with the researchers (were "confederates"). One wore a UNC tee-shirt, and the other two wore shirts from UNC's hated sports rival, Duke University. One of the confederates "put all the money in his pocket, and whispered to himself, 'I'm taking everything.'" The two other confederates then looked at the bad apple.

The researchers changed which confederate acted badly from group to group. If a UNC-clad confederate acted selfishly, the test subjects (all UNC students) left more than half their $10 for their "partners," on average. When a Duke confederate was selfish, the others left less than half. In other words, the rest of the group made up for the UNC person's bad behavior.

A second study was exactly like the first, except with more scenarios:

1. The three confederates wore UNC shirts, and one acted selfishly.
2. One wore a Duke shirt and acted selfishly.
3. Two wore Duke shirts, and a UNC confederate acted selfishly.
4. Two wore Duke shirts, and a Duke confederate acted selfishly.

When there was a second Duke confederate, subjects left more money when a UNC confederate acted badly (#3 above) than when the other Duke person acted badly (#4). But the subjects left less money when only UNC people were present (#1) than when one Duke person there acted selfishly (#2). That is, they went along with the bad apple when everyone was part of the UNC family, but when there was an outsider as a witness, the rest tried to cover for the selfish insider. The authors write, "These findings provide strong evidence that the presence of outgroup observers can curb people's tendency to follow the example of bad apples and instead motivate them to engage in restitution."

To test why this might be, the researchers conducted a third study in which other groups of students read about one or the other scenario from the first experiment above. In addition to being asked how much money they would leave, they were asked various questions about their emotions. The money results were the same as in the actual experiment. This study also found that in the scenario where the UNC person acted selfishly with a Duke person present, the UNC students reported much higher levels of guilt, suggesting that was why people left more money.

"Our research suggests that (a) few bad apples can indeed have a contagious effect on others around them," the researchers say. But in the presence of outsiders, "we are willing to correct for the bad actions of our peers and compensate for them."

Editor's note: This suggests that one way to get feuding teams to act better toward each other is to include a representative of each team in the other team's meetings.

Source: Gino, F., J. Gu, and C. Zhong (2009), "Contagion or Restitution? When Bad Apples can Motivate Ethical Behavior," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45:1299.