סמינר בהתנהגות ארגונית

ד"ר תהילה קוגוט ,אוניברסיטת בן גוריון

Research suggests that systematic discrepancies exist between ethical decisions that are made toward a group of several individuals and decisions that are made toward a single concrete individual. Specifically, public decision makers' willingness to change the existing policy and to "bend the rule" is greater when a dilemma is presented from the specific identified person's perspective than when presented as a general dilemma. Similarly, people are more willing to help a single identified victim, as compared with a group of victims experiencing the same need. I will demonstrate this effect in public, as well as private decisions and present three studies exploring the cultural sources of the effect; suggesting that this tendency is more dominant in individualistic cultures or among people who hold individualistic values than in collectivist cultures, or among people with higher collectivist values.