Corporate social responsibility has become a very common buzz word in the field of marketing since many years. This empirical paper assesses the attitude of devout and nondevout customers towards CSR in the context of a religious society. As making clear distinction between devout and nondevout customers may have associated measurement problems in a single-religion-dominated country, this paper initiates the discussion of peculiarity between two important religiosity measures, that is, observation based and solicited. A hypothetical story board with embedded CSR (...) information in a scenario supporting a religious cause is presented to the highly and less religious subjects in text written form. The scenario is followed by questions pertaining to their religious behaviors and attitude towards the company in question. The results illustrate that highly religious customers show slightly greater preference towards CSR as compared to less religious customers and the observation-based religiosity measure has a tendency of more reliability if the researchers have deep cultural and religious know-how about a specific society. Results of this study might help international marketers about choosing a particular cause under its umbrella CSR activities particularly when entering in a highly religious society dominated by a single religion. (shrink)

In this article we explore a self-regulatory perspective on the self-evaluative moral emotions, shame and guilt. Broadly conceived, self-regulation distinguishes between two types of motivation: approach/activation and avoidance/inhibition. We use this distinction to conceptually understand the socialization dimensions (parental restrictiveness versus nurturance), associated emotions (anxiety versus empathy), and forms of morality (proscriptive versus prescriptive) that serve as precursors to each self-evaluative moral emotion. We then examine the components of shame and guilt experiences in greater detail and conclude with more general (...) implications of a self-regulatory perspective on moral emotions. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that moral failures increase compensatory behaviors, such as prosociality and even self-punishment, because they are strategies to re-establish one’s positive moral self-image. Do similar compensatory behaviors result from violations in normative eating practices? Three experiments explored the moral consequences of recalling instances of perceived excessive food consumption. In Experiment 1 we showed that women recalling an overeating (vs. neutral) experience reported more guilt and a desire to engage in prosocial behavior in the form of so-called self-sacrificing. (...) In Experimental 2 this logic was applied to actual spontaneous helping behaviors towards an experimenter, with participants who recalled an overeating (vs. neutral) experience exhibiting more such helping in the laboratory. Experimental 3 expanded the investigation to self-inflicted pain: Overeating (vs. neutral) recall led to higher levels of self-punishment as indicted by longer time periods spent engaging in the cold-pressor task. In sum, failures in normative food consumption can be viewed as moral transgressions that elicits both interpersonal and intrapersonal compensatory behaviors aimed at restoring a positive moral self-image. (shrink)

A proscriptive moral orientation, involving a focus on “should nots,” is used to resolve a contradiction in the moral socialization literature made evident by findings related to shame. The traditionally accepted view that underregulation of morality (i.e., absence of internalized moral standards) accounts for increased moral transgressions by children of highly restrictive parents is reconceptualized as a problem of overregulation of proscriptive morality, reflected in the internalized focus on prohibitions. Implications of a strong proscriptive orientation for hypocritical punitive responses towards (...) others and for the ironic role of sin emphasized in some religions are briefly discussed. (shrink)