title: Out of control!? How loss of self-control influences prosocial behavior: the role of power and moral values.
abstract: Lack of self-control has been suggested to facilitate norm-transgressing behaviors because of the operation of automatic selfish impulses. Previous research, however, has shown that people having a high moral identity may not show such selfish impulses when their self-control resources are depleted. In the present research, we extended this effect to prosocial behavior. Moreover, we investigated the role of power in the interaction between moral identity and self-control depletion. More specifically, we expected that power facilitates the externalization of internal states, which implies that for people who feel powerful, rather than powerless, depletion decreases prosocial behavior especially for those low in moral identity. A laboratory experiment and a multisource field study supported our predictions. The present finding that the interaction between self-control depletion and moral identity is contingent upon people's level of power suggests that power may enable people to refrain from helping behavior. Moreover, the findings suggest that if organizations want to improve prosocial behaviors, it may be effective to situationally induce moral values in their employees.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Joosten
authors.affiliation: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marius
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Dijke
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Van Hiel
authors.affiliation: Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: De Cremer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009014:Morals; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012044:Regression Analysis; D000068356:Self-Control / Q000523:psychology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D000066477:Work Performance; D017132:Workplace