Chapter 12: Ethics and Rule Adherence in Groups

A wide variety of topics can be placed under the broad umbrella of ethics. In this discussion we are concerned with one issue—what motivates ethical behavior. By ethical behavior we mean adherence to social rules defining appropriate conduct within a particular group, organization or society (Tyler, 2006a,b). If we look within current American social institutions we find a pervasive focus on motivating rule adherence via deterrence, i.e by threatening to punish those who break rules (Tyler, 2007). This is true irrespective of whether we look at law, politics or management. Within each authorities and institutions are viewed as shaping behavior through their possession of the ability to reward or punish group members (Tyler, 2006a,b). We argue that an alternative approach is to encourage rule adherence by appealing to people's values. The key empirical question is whether such approaches work. In this chapter we present evidence supporting the argument that they do.