Emotions and Moral Behavior : The effect of disgust on moral behavior

Organizations experience immoral behavior quite often. For example, one can think of the Madoff investment scandal and the increasing rate of frauds in companies during the last years. In order to prevent employees from behaving immoral, it is important to know what drives (im)moral behavior. This work explores the effect of emotions on moral behavior. Specifically, the emotion disgust is chosen to explore this relationship. To investigate the effect of disgust on moral behavior an experiment is conducted. This experiment has two conditions. In the experimental condition disgust is evoked by a movieclip and in the control condition no specific emotions are evoked. After the watching the movie clip participants had to complete a math task on which they could cheat. Cheating is considered as an important indicator for immoral behavior. The results show a trend that suggests that individuals who experience disgust behave less moral than individuals in a neutral emotional state. This work thus explores what drives (im)moral behavior and is interesting for managers who are interested in the effect of emotions on moral behavior.