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Advertising Primed: How Professional Identity Affects Moral Reasoning

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Abstract

Moral reasoning among media professionals varies. Historically, advertising professionals score lower on the Defining Issues Test (DIT) than their media colleagues in journalism and public relations. However, the extent to which professional identity impacts media professionals’ moral reasoning has yet to be examined. To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning, if at all, and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 134 advertising practitioners working in the USA participated in an online experiment. While professional identity was not a significant predictor of moral reasoning, an interaction effect between gender and identity priming occurred. This finding suggests that we reconsider moral psychology theory’s explanatory power for media practitioners and consider how the complexity of professional identities in concert with gender and professional training, among other variables, interact to affect moral reasoning. In addition, advertising practitioners participating in this experiment scored higher on the DIT than those tested previously.

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Notes

  1. The DIT score, called a P-score, is calculated as a percentage but ranges from 0 to 95 since three of the stories included do not offer a fourth possible principled item to choose. More information regarding how the DIT is scored is in the method section.

  2. DIT scores can be calculated and reported as P-scores and D-scores, which is the score used by Castleberry, French and Carlin (1993). D scores are averaged into thirds, 0–16, 17–25,  > 26, with a national media of 20, according to the authors. The results with advertising and marketing professionals found 58% fell in the 17–25 category and 41% in the > 26 category.

  3. According to their website (https://www.redbooks.com/why-redbooks/), Redbooks lists more than 255,000 industry personnel with detailed contact information and more than 10,000 U.S. and international agency profiles. While randomization within the database was intended, Red Books is an online database that’s updated daily, influencing name placement, therefore a true random sample cannot be generated.

  4. Both the current and previous study utilized a convenience sample. However, Cunningham (2005) recruited using snowball sampling of industry contacts. In the 2005 study, the mean age was 39 years, 52.4% were female, 90% had college degrees. More than half (54%) worked in advertising for 10 years or less and 25.4% worked in advertising more than 20 years. Agencies ranged in size from small (three persons) to large, international agencies.

  5. Ferrucci et al. (2019). Journalism Practice.

  6. The DIT is administered as a six-dilemma questionnaire (DIT-1), a five-dilemma questionnaire (DIT-2) or a as a “short form” of either the DIT-1 or DIT-2, which includes three dilemmas.

  7. The DIT is copyrighted. For more information about how the DIT works and gaining permission to use the measure, visit https://ethicaldevelopment.ua.edu/about-the-dit.html.

  8. The author of the cited 2017 study, Stephen Thoma, is the Emeritus Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Ethical Development, which owns the copyright to the DIT.

  9. The 2005 study utilized an online version of the DIT. Participants were recruited through snowballing of industry contacts and 65 surveys were collected. The mean age of participants was 39, 52.4% were female, 90% had college degrees, and 23.6% had graduate degrees. More than half (54%) worked in advertising for 10 years or less and 25.4% worked in advertising for more than 20 years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Colorado Boulder, 1511 University Avenue, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Erin Schauster

  2. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA

    Patrick Ferrucci & Tara Walker

  3. Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Edson Tandoc

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  1. Erin Schauster
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Correspondence to Erin Schauster.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee of the University of Colorado Institutional Review Board for protocol 16–0590 and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Schauster, E., Ferrucci, P., Tandoc, E. et al. Advertising Primed: How Professional Identity Affects Moral Reasoning. J Bus Ethics 171, 175–187 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04429-0

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