Faculty Fellow Kristin Smith-Crowe speaks at Bentley College, Hoffman Center for Business Ethics
Associate Professor Smith-Crowe’s talk is entitled, “Out with the Racists: Ostracism is More Likely in Response to Racism Compared to Other Kinds of Moral Violations”.
Abstract:
Condemnation via exclusion is evident in current, well-publicized reactions to racism in the US, where third parties “cancel” those identified as engaging in racist speech or actions, excluding them from the social sphere. In a series of scenario-based experiments, we seek to replicate this exclusion effect and to study the underlying causes. We focus on participants’ likelihood of ostracizing those who they imagine observing engage in racist decision-making in an organizational context. We chose to focus on ostracism specifically because it is a reaction that is generally available to anyone within an organization regardless of position. We find support for our main hypothesis that participants are more likely to ostracize those who engage in a racist moral violation, compared to other types (sexism, bribery, and a control condition).
We further find support for the hypotheses that participants see ostracism as a more normative response to racism compared to other kinds of violations, that participants are made anxious by others’ racists deeds (even in the context of a scenario study), and that participants who want others to think they are moral are more likely to ostracize. These findings suggest that the response to ostracize is somewhat performative (i.e., it is a signal to others that one is moral because one is doing the “normative” thing in response), but it is also driven by the anxiety these racist acts evoke.
Event date:
FRIDAY, MARCH 25TH, 12:30 P.M. – 1:45 P.M.
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Zoom event