Alice Gaudine and Linda Thorne
Journal of Business Ethics
Vol. 31, No. 2 (May, 2001) , pp. 175-187
Vol. 31, No. 2 (May, 2001) , pp. 175-187
Published by: Springer
In the past, numerous researches have identified the influence of
emotion on people’s ethical decisions. However, little researches have been
done to understand whether different emotions promote or discourage ethical decision-making.
In this article, the author has designed a model to identify how emotion
affects individuals’ ethical decision-making process. He believes that people’s
ethical decision process has four major components that are ethical
sensitivity, prescriptive reasoning, ethical motivation and ethical behavior.
He mentioned that those components come from Rest’s Model of Moral Action. Those
four components are defined as follow. Ethical sensitivity means the ability to
realize the ethical dilemma’s existence. Prescriptive reasoning is coming up
with the alternative that can solve the ethical dilemma. Ethical motivation is
the time when a person decides whether to implement her idea. Ethical behavior
is the action in resolving the ethical dilemma. In Gaudine and Thorne’s model,
they exanimate how the feeling state (positive feeling VS negative feeling) and
arousal dimension of emotion affect each component. The following graphs are
the model they adapted from others’ work.