Individuals' willingness to act in socially desirable ways, such as sharing resources with others and abiding by norms of ethical conduct, is a necessary condition of social life. The current research reconciles two seemingly contradicting sets of findings on the role of cognitive control in...

The current research reconciles two contradicting sets of findings on the role of cognitive control in socially desirable behaviors. One set of findings suggests that people are tempted by self-serving impulses and have to rely on cognitive control overriding such impulses to act in socially...

This research tested the idea that lack of material resources (e.g., low income) causes people to make harsher moral judgments because lack of material resources is associated with a lower ability to cope with the effects of others' harmful behavior. Consistent with this idea, a large...

In this research, we examine when and why organizational environments influence how employees respond to moral issues. Past research proposed that social influences in organizations affect employees' ethical decision making, but did not explain when and why some individuals are affected by the...

This paper provides an answer to the question of why agents make self-serving decisions under moral hazard and how their self-serving decisions can be kept in check through institutional arrangements. Our theoretical model predicts that the agents' power and the manner in which they are held...