Reminders Of Money Triggers Unethical Outcomes:the Mediating Effect Of The Accessibility Of Moral Identity

Money is a good servant and a bad master.Money has long been a controversial topic.Since Vohs published a research about money priming in"Science" in 2006,more and more scholars have come to be interested in this domain.In recent years,money priming and Unethical behavior has always been the hot topics of concern for researchers.The increasingly widening wealth gap in our country has formed a disagreements in the construction of the harmonious society,a lot of new problems about morality appear at the same time.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the concept of money and the unethical behavior.This research is based on Social-Cognitive Model of Moral Identity.The first aim of the study was to examine the relationship between the concept of money and unethical behavior and to determine whether the Centrality of moral identity moderated this relationship.The second aim of the study was to tested whether the moderating effect of centrality of moral identity may be completely or partially mediated by accessibility of moral identity.This research uses the complete randomalized design.The independent variable is the case of money priming;the dependent variable is cheating.The intermediary variable is accessibility of moral identity;the regulating variable is centrality of moral identity.300 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to two conditions.In experimental conditions participants were reminded of money;Control participants were activated neutral concepts.The Internalization subscale of Aquino and Reed's moral identity measure was used to assess centrality of moral identity.a ranking procedure was used to assess the current accessibility of moral identity.Unsolvable logic puzzles are used to measure the cheating.After statistical analysis,our findings are as follows:(1)The concept of money has a significant predictive effect on unethical behavior.Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts,participants primed with money preferred to make more unethical behavior;(2)The centrality of moral identity moderated the effect of the concept of money on unethical behavior.When the Centrality of moral identity of individual is lower,whether or not money primed has a small difference to unethical behavior of individual,unethical behavior is mainly affected by the centrality of moral identity of individual;When the Centrality of moral identity of individual is higher,whether or not the money primed has great influence on unethical behavior of individual.(3)Accessibility of moral identity mediated this moderation effect.When the Centrality of moral identity of individual is lower,whether or not money primed has a small difference to unethical behavior of individual,and accessibility of moral identity is lower,individuals are more likely to make unethical behavior.When the Centrality of moral identity of individual is higher,money primed reduce Accessibility of moral identity,individuals are more likely to make unethical behavior.