Most companies use codes of conduct, ethics training, and regular communication to ensure that employees know about rules to follow to avoid misconduct. In the present research, we focused on the type of language used in codes of conduct and showed that impersonal language (e.g., “employees” or “members”) and personal, communal language (e.g., “we”) lead to different behaviors because they change how people perceive the group or organization of which they are a part. Using multiple methods, including lab- and field-based experiments (total N = 1,443), and a large data set of S&P 500 firms (i.e., publicly traded, large U.S. companies that are part of the S&P 500 stock market index), we robustly demonstrated that personal, communal language (compared with impersonal language) influences perceptions of a group’s warmth, which, in turn, increases levels of dishonesty among its members.

中文翻译：

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个人、公共关系的伦理危险：语言视角

大多数公司使用行为准则、道德培训和定期沟通来确保员工了解应遵守的规则，以避免不当行为。在本研究中，我们关注行为准则中使用的语言类型，并表明非个人语言（例如“员工”或“成员”）和个人公共语言（例如“我们”）会导致不同的行为，因为它们改变了人们对他们所属的团体或组织的看法。使用多种方法，包括基于实验室和实地的实验（总 N = 1,443），以及标准普尔 500 指数公司（即，属于标准普尔 500 指数股票市场指数一部分的公开交易的大型美国公司）的大型数据集，我们有力地证明了个人的、公共的语言（与非个人语言相比）会影响对一个群体的热情的看法，反过来，