Definition
Behavioral ethics is the social scientific study of ethical and unethical behavior. The field occupies a space distinct from normative or legal approaches to ethics, which explore how individuals should behave, and instead aims to understand through empirical study how individuals actually do behave in ethical contexts and why.
Euphemisms are the substitution of words or phrases that evoke negative psychological effects. Euphemisms operate by making harmful conduct less so, thereby reducing personal responsibility for it. Euphemisms are often described as a process of moral disengagement, but a more accurate description from a behavioral ethics standpoint is that they are an aid to rationalization. Rationalizations, the psychological mechanism by which individuals internally verbalize justifications for future unethical or illegal acts so as to keep their...
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Notes
- 1.
Id. at 153. See also, Anand et al. (2005) (discussing how employees perpetrating corrupt acts engage in “rationalizing tactics” and identifying six tactics); Heath (2008) (suggesting that bureaucratic organizations “might constitute peculiarly criminogenic environments” and discussing how that fosters rationalizations); Prentice (2015), at 69–74 (identifying rationalizations and discussing how organizations can help thwart them); Haugh (2015) (analyzing rationalizations’ role in white collar crime and how it is fostered by overcriminalization).
- 2.
Cressey, supra note [1965], at 15. See also, Todd Haugh, The Criminalization of Compliance, 92 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1215 (2017).
- 3.
Cressey, supra note [1965], at 15.
- 4.
Cressey, supra note [1965], at 15.
- 5.
Cressey, supra note [1965], at 15.
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Haugh, T. (2018). Behavioral Ethics and Euphemisms. In: Poff, D., Michalos, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_198-1
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