The Moderating Role Of Pay Satisfaction In The Disappearance Of The Slippery Slope Effect

The slippery slope effect refers to the tendency that the degree of individual immorality increases gradually with the passage of time,that is,the unethical behavior is repetitive and progressive.It widely exists at the individual level and in the process of interpersonal interaction,which will affect the normal social interaction of individuals and even hinder the healthy development of social harmony.Current researchers have made many excellent achievements in exploring the psychological mechanisms of slippery slope.However,the subsequent change trend of slippery slope has not been confirmed,and the intervention methods that can cure both the symptoms and root causes of slippery slope are urgently needed to be explored.On the one hand,studies are conflicting about what happens next to the slippery slope.One study found that the slippery slope does not persist,and the researchers speculated that it may be a function of pay satisfaction.On the other hand,research has shown that the right dorsolateral prefrontal lobe is specific for resolving psychological conflicts between honesty and profit,and is a key brain region for controlling unethical behavior.Using HD-tDCS to alter the neural activity of r-dl PFC can interfere with unethical behavior,but the effect of this approach on the slippery slope under different pay satisfaction is unknown.The paper uses two studies and dice paradigm to investigate the effect of pay satisfaction on the slippery slope.The preliminary experiment discussed whether the slippery slope would disappear in a specific situation.The first study was to investigate whether pay satisfaction was the key reason for the disappearance of the slippery slope.In study 2,HD-tDCS was used to regulate the neural activity of r-dl PFC and observe the changes of slippery slope.Preliminary experiment uses a single factor experimental design between subjects of 2(pay type:accumulate vs.not accumulate).76 college students were selected as research subjects to investigate the difference in unethical behavior between the two task conditions in the long-round dice paradigm.The curve fitting results show that the unethical behaviors of the subjects show a continuous slippery slope under the incentive mechanism with no accumulative benefits.Under the reward mechanism of benefit accumulation,the unethical behaviors of the subjects showed a tendency of first sliding down and then disappearing.It proves that the premise and hypothesis of this research are valid,and the research conclusions of domestic and foreign cultures on this topic are consistent.Experiment 1a uses a single factor experimental design between subjects of 2(pay satisfaction type:high vs.low).A total of 130 college students were selected to examine the temporal trends of unethical behavior in the context of two types of pay satisfaction.Experiment 1b Improved on Experiment 1a,selected 128 college students,and further conducted personalized matching for each subject in terms of manipulation of pay satisfaction.The results of these two studies show that:(1)the lying amount of subjects in the low-pay satisfaction group is significantly higher than that in the high-pay satisfaction group;(2)Under the condition of high pay satisfaction,the overall landslide effect is not significant,while under the condition of low pay satisfaction,the slippery slope is significant;(3)Moderating effect analysis shows that pay satisfaction has a significant moderating effect on the trend of cheating rate in multiple rounds;(4)In terms of emotions,people with high pay satisfaction and honesty all the time have significantly higher positive emotions,while those with low pay satisfaction and those who lie have significantly higher negative emotions.Experiment 2 use a mixed experiment design of 2(pay satisfaction type: high vs.low)×3HD-tDCS stimulation(cathode vs.anode vs.sham).In this study,46 college students were recruited as the research object,and the intervention effect of r-dl PFC stimulated by HD-tDCS on slippery slope was investigated by dice rolling task.The results show that:(1)Pay satisfaction has significant moderating effects on the slippery slope under the three kinds of stimulus conditions.(2)The effect of HD-tDCS on the intervention of high pay satisfaction type was not significant,but on the intervention of low pay satisfaction type was significant.Anode stimulation significantly reduced the amount of lying in the low pay satisfaction group,but the slippery slope did not disappear.In conclusion,the paper found that the slippery slope disappeared when the pay satisfaction was high,and the moral balance theory could well explain this result.Anode stimulation of HD-TDCS can reduce the amount of lying in the condition of low pay satisfaction,but it can not eliminate the slippery slope.The results prove that high pay satisfaction plays a key role in solving the slippery slope.In conclusion,the paper explores the behavior and brain mechanisms level the key role of pay satisfaction disappeared in slippery slope,reveals the higher pay satisfaction is weakened slippery slope.It also finds that although anode stimulation of HD-TDCS can effectively reduce the amount of unethical behavior,it still cannot eliminate the slippery slope.The paper explores that the root cause of the disappearance of slippery slope is pay satisfaction,which provides a new idea for understanding the internal psychological process of slippery slope at the theoretical level and a new channel for human resource management of the government and enterprises at the practical level.