Dan Freeman

Personality, Identity, and Character: Moral Identity in Business Situations: A Social-Cognitive Framework for Understanding Moral Functioning

The concept of moral identity has gained considerable theoretical and empirical traction since Augusto Blasi (1983) used the term in his Self Model of Moral Functioning over 20 years ago. Since then, a number of scholars (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Colby & Damon, 1992; Hoffman, 2000; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004) have expanded on Blasis ideas, and the collected papers in this volume testify to the variety and richness of these perspectives. In this chapter, we contribute to the ongoing conversation about the role of moral identity in guiding moral action by presenting a social-cognitive model that we apply to the domain of business. As researchers whose areas of study are organizational behavior and marketing, we are convinced that the concept of moral identity holds enormous promise for broadening our understanding of how moral constructs and concerns influence business activities, ranging from negotiations, leadership, and teamwork, to strategic decision making, advertising, and consumer behavior. Our aim is to take moral identity from its roots in developmental psychology and apply it to a new arena where moral decisions – questions about right and wrong – are unavoidable, and where people often have to make difficult tradeoffs among competing and equally compelling moral values. The outline of our chapter is as follows. First, we briefly review the social-cognitive perspective on moral identity, highlighting a conception proposed by Aquino and Reed (2002) that defines moral identity in terms of its self-importance . Second, we present a model that situates moral identity within a network of other constructs that have been shown by prior theory and research to be related to moral behavior.

Navigating the Central Tensions in Research on At-Risk Consumers: Challenges and Opportunities

A perennial problem in social marketing and public policy is the plight of at-risk consumers. The authors define at-risk consumers as marketplace participants who, because of historical or personal circumstances or disabilities, may be harmed by marketers’ practices or may be unable or unwilling to take full advantage of marketplace opportunities. This definition refers to either objective reality or perceptions. Early research focused on consumers who were at risk because they were poor, ethnic or racial minorities, immigrants, women, or elderly. Todays researchers also study consumers who are at risk because they are from religious minorities, disabled, illiterate, homeless, indigent, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The authors identify four tensions affecting research on and policy and marketing applications for at-risk populations: the value of focusing on (1) vulnerabilities versus strengths, (2) radical versus marginal change, (3) targeting versus nontargeting, and (4) encouraging knowledgeable versus naive consumers. They conclude with a discussion of the significance of including at-risk consumers as full marketplace participants and identify future research directions.

Preteens’ Ascribed Motivations to Smoke (Not Smoke)

Opponents of additional controls on tobacco marketing designed to protect children assert they are unnecessary because tobacco marketing is not salient to children. However, these children are at an important time in their lives, as they are on the cusp on entering their teen years, where risk and reward centers of the brain are out of balance and engaging in risky behaviors is commonplace (Cauffman et al, in press; Steinberg et al 2008). We find that preteens have sophisticated knowledge of promotion-related motivations to smoke and prevention-related motivations to not smoke and clearly recognize benefits of smoking (e.g., obtaining social approval from one’s peers, attracting members of the opposite sex, relaxation, stress reduction) despite reporting overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward smoking. These positive associations could potentially lead to impressions that are difficult to counter with anti-smoking messages, and perhaps lead to tobacco use initiation just a few years later.