Is this tactic ethical? Biased judgments of ethics in negotiation

This study examines how people are led, via differential identification, to regard ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics as more or less morally acc eptable. Research participants evaluated a videotape of a dyadic negotiatio n that either contained or did not contain an ethically ambiguous action. C rosscutting this variable, either the "perpetrator" or the "victim" in the negotiation videotape was made situationally relevant for the participant b y telling him or her that he or she would later negotiate, taking either th e role of the perpetrator or the victim. We predicted that participants who identified with either initiators or targets of the ethically ambiguous ac tion would exhibit biased evaluations of what they considered ethical in ne gotiation. Consistent with this hypothesis, perpetrator-focused participant s perceived the perpetrator and the ethically ambiguous action as significa ntly more ethical than victim-focused participants. The results of a third, "neutral observer" group of participants helped interpret this result. We found some evidence for the generalization of this judgment to other ethica lly ambiguous acts.