Why your ethical framework won’t work
Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to keep your company, employees, or even yourself on track to make ethical decisions over time, even after writing an ethics manifesto, requiring ethics training, hosting an ethics workshop, and so forth?. This typical challenge is faced by many.
Ethical frameworks, manifestos, and other documents are designed to help guide conversations toward asking hard , cognitively complex questions in order to determine which values or ideas are ethical. Remember, these frameworks are just that — scaffolds for engaging in the difficult topic of ethics in light of value conflicts.
Part of this struggle may in part arise from a powerful ethical idea called ethical fading. This principle is worth considering because it helps us think through why ethical models are not enough to guide ethical decision making.
What is Ethical fading?
As the University of Texas at Austin’s, Ethic’s Unwrapped organization explains, “Ethical fading occurs when the ethical aspects of a decision disappear from view. This happens when people focus heavily on some other aspect of a decision, such as profitability or winning. People tend to see what they are looking for, and if they are not looking for an ethical issue, they may miss it altogether.”
The ethical fading theory suggests that after having once made a perceived ethical choice, our ability to make ethical decisions fades over time. Meaning that after using an ethical framework that in a week, month, or year; one is likely to make a less ethical decision. Below, I have created a simple graph modeling the theory behind ethical fading.
Trends that drive ethical fading
After conducting research and interviews, I noticed two trends that appear to be consistent drivers of this fading: (1) Self-efficacy and defensibility and (2) poor judgement heuristics. In addition, current industry approaches to decision making may be accelerating this fade.
Let’s start by looking at self-determination and personal efficacy as a unit. When combined, they state that individuals feel empowered to make the right decision every time and that to maintain one’s character they feel obligated to defend a decision once they have made it, whether that decision was good or bad.
This desire for self-control through mastery, autonomy, and purpose encourages the ethical dilemma leading to ethical fading. Often, once challenged by others concerning a decision made, the individual becomes defensive — through various means including hindsight bias and character determinism — and places barriers between themselves and future ethical discussions due to a self-perspective that they are ethical and right in their decision making. Over time, this fade accelerates through confirmation bias that can be mapped by cybernetics interactions with friends, which then leads to poorer evaluation of ethical decisions over time. Defending such a position is like living in an echo chamber of self-thought. Thus, while an individual or organization may use an ethical framework to make a decision, over time their defensive walls are built higher and stronger, which limits future ethical engagement.
A second contributing factor influencing ethical fading is plagued by many judgment heuristics, many of which have been discovered and researched by the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. These theories help us define and draw attention to weaknesses in our ability to make ethical decisions. While there are many interesting theories, the two I focus on here are the availability heuristic and the substitution heuristic.
The availability heuristic operates on the premise that we make decisions based on the most recent information we have been exposed to–within the last 48 hours. Thus, soon after an individual experiences an ethics workshop or training, he or she is most likely to make a preferred ethical decision using an ethical framework. However, over time, ethical fading occurs and those decision factors dim from the individual’s memory and, due to the overconfidence effect, he or she adopts a self-perception of being an ethical person and will make future decisions based on only the most recent information he or she has been exposed to and on the last decision he or she made. This means that over time each ethical decision becomes less potent or thoughtful while simultaneously discouraging the individual to complete the ethical feedback loop proposed by ethical frameworks.
Most ethical frameworks, manifestos, and so forth promote the need for asking poignant questions among a small group of individuals to create an ethical decision. However, the substitution heuristic often comes into play. The substitution heuristic states that it is our human nature to substitute difficult questions for easier ones. For example, if an ethical framework asks the question: “Does the implementation of my product cause harm (physical, psychological, emotional, and so forth) to those using it?” One would substitute this cognitively difficult question with something like “Does this product harm me?”
Currently, persuasive media techniques, led by BJ Fogg’s Persuasive Technology lab at Stanford and by others in different industries, are driving user’s online behavior by creating simplified decision-making process (for example, cognitive UI changes, notification rhythm, game progression, and so forth). These changes lead to decreased cognitive engagement that move individuals from critically engaging in the decision-making process (system two, as Khaneman calls it) to a system one, or lizard brain, mentality that selects the easiest answer with the decision-making process going unnoticed.
Most tech companies use this model to introduce interface tweaks designed to increase engagement on Facebook, Google, and other platforms while decreasing cognitive engagement, with the objective of maintaining user addiction or deep connection over time. While in theory this is good for helping us move through life more quickly and has increased the efficiency of many individuals by streamlining delivery or improving an insurance enrollment process — just as we do by forming healthy stereotypes as discussed in psychology and communication studies. The result of such a persistent stance, however, is supporting less cognitive engagement that may accelerate the ethical fade.
Extending past an ethical framework
I do not discount the immense work done by ethicists. I seek to add new considerations about the factors impacting ethical fading. By giving these judgment faults a name and visualizing how they affect ethical decision making, I hope we can begin applying a more future-focused lens toward ethics and recognize the general tendency for individuals to fade, no matter how “rock solid” an ethical framework may be.
Ethical fading serves as a model for considering why implementing and maintaining an ethical framework or training remains difficult for individuals to maintain over time. This should alert us to the fact that current ethical feedback loops may not be enough to overcome our ability to critically engage in the ethical decision-making process.
In my next article I think about how we could counteract ethical fading with a more sustained approach.
