Selfish, excessive, greedy: The psychological causes and consequences of perceptions of greed

Perceptions of greed permeate the popular business and management environment, yet the scholarly literature in these areas has given scant attention to greed and perceptions of greed. In three laboratory studies, I investigated both the antecedents and consequences of perceived greed. Contrary to a number of literatures’ treatment of greed as simply a synonym for selfishness, I proposed that the three antecedents of perceived greed are distributive injustice, inference of a selfish motive to acquire, and relative deprivation. I then explored four key outcomes of perceived of greed: personal anger, moral outrage, punishment behaviors, and social distancing behaviors. Results demonstrated that perceptions of greed are formed when an individual experiences a distributive injustice, combined with an inference of a selfish motive to acquire, and that each of personal anger, moral outrage, punishment behaviors and social distancing are consequences of perceiving others as greedy. Relative deprivation contributed to perceptions of greed, but in a manner different from the hypothesized model. Running Head: PERCEPTIONS OF GREED 11 Selfish, excessive, greedy: The psychological causes and consequences of perceptions of greed The recessionary economic climate present in the United States for the past several years has prompted a public outlash against perceived greed (Sarna, 2010) and dominated the business press (Anderson & Gilliland, 2014). Corporate scandals involving nearly two dozen major U.S. firms (Patsuris, 2002) have plagued a number of the nation’s commercial sectors, most notably Wall Street investment banking and other related banking sectors. Outrage at the actions of both these organizations and the individuals who helm them prompted increased press coverage of “greedy” behavior (Anderson & Gilliland, 2014) and spawned the Occupy movement. This latter phenomenon is particularly interesting in that it is one of the largest grassroots protest campaigns since demonstrations related to racial equality in the 1960’s (Walters, 2011), involving millions of citizens in over 95 cities in 82 countries (Adam, 2011). Another notable recent protest event was the 2006 nationwide (U.S.) effort protesting immigration reforms passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (Engler, 2009). This protest action also involved millions of individuals. Not surprisingly, the racial issues of the 1960’s, the social issues surrounding immigration and the economic issues driving the Occupy movement share a common theme of fairness. These protest movements offer vivid testimony to the strength with which individuals react to injustice and perceptions of greed, yet despite this dramatic showing, the United States’ culture is conflicted on the topic of greed. Perhaps articulated best by Dr. Milton Friedman, the Nobel-prize winning economist, the notion that greed is a productive motivation benefitting society as a whole is embraced in the U.S. (Weiner, 1979). Whether considered a necessary evil or an outright crime, reactions to perceptions of greed are generally not positive. Running Head: PERCEPTIONS OF GREED 12 What is currently missing from the discourse regarding greed is an understanding of the social psychological underpinnings that lead people to form perceptions of greed, as well as how these perceptions result in certain attitudes and behaviors directed at greedy others (Gilliand & Anderson, 2011). In many ways and in many contexts, it is almost taken for granted that “we know it when we see it” when it comes to greed, and that greed is a unidimensional concept synonymous with selfishness. To date the management literature has not formally addressed the antecedents and consequences of perceptions of greed (for exceptions, see Gilliand & Anderson, 2011 and Wang & Murnighan 2011) and given the association that greed has with business and managerial settings, this gap is surprising. In an effort to shed light on our reactions to perceptions of greed, I conducted a series of studies testing a model that proposes three antecedents to perceptions of greed. These studies also tested four separate outcomes of perceptions of greed. In order to understand our reactions to perceived greed toward any target, it is important to first understand how individuals arrive at perceptions of greed, and how they treat individuals that they perceive to be greedy. This knowledge will provide a foundation for understanding the social psychological processes behind any assessment of greed and subsequent reaction to any target. The proposed antecedents are distributive injustice, inference of a selfish motive to acquire, and relative deprivation, and the four outcomes are personal anger, moral outrage, punishment behaviors, and social distancing behaviors. These studies were conducted in a laboratory setting, using a common-pool resource dilemma as the platform for exploring the relationships between the key variables. This research represents the first empirical test of how perceptions of greed are formed, as well as the first direct empirical test of how we react to others’ greedy behavior. Running Head: PERCEPTIONS OF GREED 13 Understanding greed perceptions is important to both organizational behavior researchers and the larger business community. The proliferation of business scandals and public admonishment of greedy individuals, companies, and industries means that organizational behavior researchers need to understand both the social psychological bases for perceptions of greed, as well as the consequences of perceptions of greed. This research begins that investigation. The notion that greed is simply synonymous with selfishness or self-interest does little to explain why people react to perceptions of greed with denigration (Sarna, 2010) and protest (Adam, 2011). Reactions such as these are divisive; both greedy behavior and reactions to greedy behavior threaten to disrupt interpersonal relationships as well as undermine the social norms of fairness and reciprocity that benefit society as a whole. Greed is mentioned in a wide variety of literatures, yet a coherent or even clear definition of the construct is only now being established in the scholarly literature (Gilliland & Anderson, 2011; Wang & Murnighan, 2011). In surveying these various literatures, it becomes clear that the term “greed” is used with an assumption that the word is self-evident. I agree with Davis (1959) in that any assumptions made about a construct “can be confirmed or rejected only when they have been spelled out. ” (p. 280). To this end, I will briefly survey these literatures, highlighting key aspects of the use of the word greed, before defining the term for the purposes of this study and outlining a model of reactions to perceived greed. The spiritual literature explores greed, not surprisingly, as one of the seven “deadly” sins, suggesting that the remaining six sins spring from greed, and indeed that greed is synonymous with some of the other sins such as gluttony and lust (Tickle, 2004). Here, the domain and the topic both carry a heavy emphasis on the immorality of greed. Running Head: PERCEPTIONS OF GREED 14 In the political science literature, perceived greed is offered as an antecedent to feelings of grievance against state entities, which if unchecked, can lead to war and revolution (Collier, 2000). Implied in this use of the word greed is the notion that government officials are exploiting the citizens they are supposed to serve. In its treatment of greed, the experimental economics literature also highlights the tension between exploitation and cooperation. This literature conceptualizes greed in terms of both an active behavior and a passive behavior, specifically profit maximizing and free riding behaviors respectively. Samuelson, Messick, Rutte & Wilke (1984) suggest that there are three motivational mechanisms at work when individuals are faced with a decision about the acquisition of resources: greed, fairness and a desire for efficiency in the use of resources. Wilke (1991) further refined this model to suggest that greed is the dominating motivation, attenuated by fairness and/or efficiency, and this model is supported by later empirical studies. Eek and Biel (2003) found that fairness and a desire for efficiency did constrain greedy behavior, however the process by which behavior is deemed greedy is nowhere in either their empirical studies or in the theoretical foundations that lead to their work. Further, there is a clear contrast between greed and fairness implied in Wilke’s (2001) greed-efficiency-fairness (GEF) hypothesis. Finally, the social psychology literature also addresses the topic of greed, notably in recent years. Crossley’s (2009) investigation into reactions to social undermining includes perceived greed as an antecedent to victim’s responses to undermining, suggesting that perceptions of greed may be associated with feelings of exploitation. He defines greed as a “selfish effort” and implies that this selfish effort benefits one individual at the expense of another, as expressed by social undermining (Crossley, 2009; p. 17). Grégoire, Laufer and Tripp Running Head: PERCEPTIONS OF GREED 15 (2010) examined perceived firm greed as an antecedent to customer revenge behaviors. Drawing on the larger body of customer revenge literature, they note that customers who experience an injustice and who also form blame attributions toward the organization experience a desire for revenge and engage in revenge behaviors. It is interesting to note that in the treatment of greed in these various literatures, exploitation is implied, yet rarely expressly stated. One of the issues in distinguishing greed from selfishness may be driven by an inattention to exploitation as a specific facet of greed. Examining the use of greed in these literatures suggests that the difference between selfish behavior and greedy behavior is, at least partially, rooted in whet