Sweatshop labor is wrong unless the shoes are cute: Cognition can both help and hurt moral motivated reasoning

Citation: Neeru Paharia, Kathleen D. Vohs, Rohit Deshpandé (2013) Sweatshop labor is wrong unless the shoes are cute: Cognition can both help and hurt moral motivated reasoning. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (Volume 121) (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.01.001
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.01.001
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.01.001
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Sweatshop labor is wrong unless the shoes are cute: Cognition can both help and hurt moral motivated reasoning
Download: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597813000149
Tagged:

Summary

In the paper researchers show that people use "motivated reasoning" to justify products made with sweatshop labor. That is, people are more likely to endorse the use of sweatshop labor if the product is something they like. If the product is something they don't like, they're less likely to endorse sweatshop labor.

In Experiment 1, we show that participants are motivated to agree with economic justifications when considering a Caribbean vacation with questionable labor for themselves than for their friends. In Experiment 2, we show that agreement with economic justifications can mediate a relationship between product desirability and purchase intention when participants considered a hypothetical pair of Nike shoes. In Experiment 3, we investigate the mechanisms that underlie this process. By putting participants under cognitive load (memorize a long number), we find evidence to support participants intuitively may not endorse economic justifications, but use cognitive resources to justify its use. That is they use their brain to actively think about why it's okay, even if they intuitively don't feel this way. Finally in Experiment 4, we use Apple computers, a well-liked company, and show that motivated reasoning is present under separate evaluations but not under joint evaluations. When considering two companies together, participants were less able to engage in motivated reasoning.

Though consumers say they care about sweatshop labor, and prefer products made without it, our investigation suggests that motivated and contextual factors might limit their abilities to turn their feelings into action. When cognitive resources are available, participants may use accessible economic justifications to rationalize their use of sweatshop labor, particularly in cases when they are highly involved with a product. Their ability to agree with economic justifications may impact their purchase intention, where higher levels of agreement with economic justifications may lead to more purchasing of sweatshop-made products.