We discuss cultural group selection under the view of the frozen plasticity theory and the different explanatory power and predictions of this framework. We present evidence that cultural adaptations and their influence on the degree of cooperation may be more complex than presented by Richerson et al., and conclude with the gene-environment-culture relationship and its impacts on cultural group selection.

We conducted focus groups with participants of a laboratory experiment on cheating with the aim to describe and structure participants’ lived experience with the experiment and to compare their per...

The development of behavioral ethics has brought forth a detailed understanding of the processes of moral perception, decision-making and behavior within and beyond organizations and communities. However, prescriptive recommendations of behavioral research regarding how to support an ethical environment often underestimate the specifics of organizational characteristics that may encourage the occurrence and persistence of dishonesty, especially regarding deception as a desired action in some instances by some employees and managers. Furthermore, behavioral research does not adequately recognize the notion that dishonesty (...) can be sometimes viewed as an acceptable cost for some expected traits or skills of an employee such as intelligence or creativity. Under some conditions, deception can be even considered a moral, prosocial activity. Finally, formal ethics systems and situational measures to promote honesty may be inefficient or directly harmful. This article highlights questions of how to assess such factors in research on (un)ethical behavior within organizations. (shrink)