Does Competition Increase Unethical Behavior? Evidence From The Joker Task

Unethical behavior refers to the violation of accepted standards or rules while seeking benefits for oneself,which may have serious damaging consequences for individuals,organizations and even society.In recent years,more and more researchers have begun to study the influencing factors of unethical behavior,and put forward a variety of theories and mechanisms.This study discusses the factors that can influence unethical behavior from the aspects of environment,others and oneself,namely competition,competitor performance and achievement motivation.The research results can help people to have a deeper understanding of the factors and ways of unethical behavior,so as to reduce the occurrence of unethical behavior.This study used an adapted version of the Joker task to measure the frequency of unethical behavior.The study was divided into two parts.The first study explored the differences in participants’ unethical behaviors from the presence or absence of competitors.They found that unethical behavior increased in the presence of competitors.Based on the results of the first study,the second study further explored the influence of competitors’ performance on participants’ unethical behavior,and also introduced the independent variable of achievement motivation to explore how competitors’ performance and individual achievement motivation interact with unethical behavior.The results showed that:(1)Participants motivated to avoid failure engaged in more unethical behavior than those motivated to pursue success.(2)Participants behaved most unethically when their competitors’ scores were close to those of the participants;when the competitor scored lower than the participant,the participant behaved unethically;participants behaved least unethically when their competitors scored higher than the participants.(3)For the participants with the pursuit of success motivation,there was no significant difference in unethical behavior when their competitors’ scores were close to or lower than their own;For participants who avoided failure,they behaved significantly less unethically when their competitor’s score was lower than their own than when their competitor’s score was close to theirs.The results of this study are as follows: competitive situations increase unethical behavior;People behave most unethically in the presence of equal competitors;Individuals motivated to avoid failure are more likely to behave immorally than individuals motivated to pursue success.This study will help to enrich the research on the theoretical mechanism of the influence of competition on unethical behavior as well as the research on the individual factors influencing unethical behavior.