RT Article
T1 The Effects of Thought Suppression on Ethical Decision Making: Mental Rebound Versus Ego Depletion
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 147
IS 1
SP 65
OP 79
A1 Yam, Kai Chi
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1785663208
AB Although thought suppression is a commonly used self-control strategy that has far-reaching consequences, its effect on ethical decision making is unclear. Whereas ironic process theory suggests that suppressing ethics-related thoughts leads to mental rebounds of ethicality and decreased unethical behavior, ego depletion theory suggests that thought suppression can lead to reduced self-control and increased unethical behavior. Integrating the two theories, I propose that the effect of thought suppression on unethical behavior hinges on the content of the suppressed thoughts. Participants who suppressed ethics-related [-unrelated] thoughts engaged in less [more] cyber bullying (Experiment 1), cheating (Experiments 2–3), and dishonesty (Experiment 4) compared to participants in the control conditions. Explicit (Experiment 3) and implicit (Experiment 4) moral awareness was found to mediate this moderated effect. Experiment 4 further demonstrated that suppressing ethics-related thoughts reduces self-control performance on a subsequent amoral task, but not on subsequent ethical decision making.
K1 Moral awareness
K1 Behavioral ethics
K1 Ironic process
K1 Ego depletion
K1 Thought suppression
DO 10.1007/s10551-015-2944-2