Assignment: Psychological Theory

Colby and Damon (1992), for example, argue that self-goals and moral goals become fused during the development of moral identity,

such that moral exemplars regard ethical conduct as expressing iden- tity rather than following external moral rules. For those with high

integrity, there is a strong linkage between identity and the moral prescriptions, and it is implied that the prescriptions are generally clear and well defined. The triangle model adds the element of per-

ceived personal control to bring about the desired moral outcomes and additional specific hypotheses about self-engagement and

disengagement. The concept of principled commitment is also germane to the

organizational behavior literature. Honesty testing, usually called integrity testing, focuses on identifying attitudes and personality

characteristics that predict desirable employee conduct. Organiza- tional researchers have identified measures that predict undesirable

job behaviors (e.g., theft, disciplinary actions, absenteeism), good organizational citizenship, and job performance (Ones, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, 1993; Sackett &Wanek, 1996). These include self-reports

of honesty, past inappropriate conduct (e.g., stealing), and attitudes that justify theft, as well as personality traits relating to the Big Five

clusters of conscientiousness and agreeableness. Although a review is beyond the scope of the present article, this research tradition con-

verges on qualities related to moral identity and principled commit- ment. The Integrity Scale may be able to contribute to theory and

research in this tradition because it predicts a range of pro-social and antisocial activities and, unlike some of the scales currently used (Sackett & Wanek, 1996), it is not proprietary, is short and can be

readily incorporated into research, is not context bound for use only in the workplace, and is not as highly correlated with measures of

social desirability. The idea of principled versus expedient ideologies also brings to

mind research on self-monitoring and the principled versus prag- matic self. Snyder (1987) proposed that high self-monitors are prag-

matic in their interpersonal orientation, being willing and able to modify their behavior to obtain social rewards, whereas low self-

monitors are principled, displaying greater consistency between their attitudes and behaviors. The self-monitoring scale consists of

350 Schlenker, Weigold, & Schlenker

components that assess self-reported public performing, e.g., acting

ability, and other directedness, e.g., being different things to different people (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). The former dimension is irrel-

evant to ethical ideology, and the latter dimension is conceptually closer to authenticity (being true to self) than to integrity (being

committed to moral principles). Indeed, items that assess self-mon- itoring are generally neutral with respect to morality. Interestingly, it

has been suggested that low self-monitors want to establish identities as people who are genuine and act on their beliefs (Gangestad &

Snyder, 2000; Schlenker & Weigold, 1990); this goal may contribute to some convergence between constructs. As might be expected, then, self-monitoring and integrity scores show a significant but

modest negative relationship, r (164)5 � .22, p5 .004 (Schlenker, 2007).

In conclusion, individual differences in integrity are related to how people perceive and respond to ethical dilemmas. Study 1 es-

tablished the association between integrity and heroes. Study 2 showed that integrity predicted evaluations of characters who be-

haved in ethically admirable or condemnable ways. Those high in integrity prefer evidence of doing the right thing even if it means failure in a materialistic sense, whereas those low in integrity are

more torn between the right thing and the successful thing. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno stated, ‘‘Success without honor is

an unseasoned dish. It will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.’’ Paterno appears to be more correct when describing those of

higher integrity; the unseasoned dish seems to taste better for those of lower integrity.

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