Poll Finds Line Between Right, Wrong Blurred

By MATTHEW EBNET

Nov. 23, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Orange County residents believe increasing pressures to succeed in a ruthlessly competitive modern world have blurred the line between right and wrong, according to a poll conducted for The Times’ Orange County Edition.

Nearly half of 600 adults interviewed for the poll said they believe the pressure to succeed makes people behave less ethically, and 42% said people have become less moral over the last decade.

“Unethical behavior is just accepted,” said Matt Stevens, 25, of San Clemente. A photo lab manager, Stevens said he doesn’t lie or cheat, unlike many of his friends.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” he said. “Once you get the job, you push people [aside] to get up to the top,” he said of many in his generation. “Whatever it takes.”

Michael McDonald, a teacher who lives in Anaheim, agreed. “I see kids who will do anything to succeed,” he said.

“These days, a video game comes out. But along with the video game, they sell a book on how to solve the video game. So the kids go buy the game and the book and get a bazillion points. I say, ‘Did you earn them?’ and they don’t answer. They just say, ‘But look what I got.’ ”

The results underscore the view of some ethics experts that Americans are breaking more rules than ever to get what they want because for many, success is all that counts--and because dishonor is not as dishonorable as it once was.

“The stakes to succeed have been raised so high that our willpower to be moral has changed for the worse,” said Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey.

And because some high-profile people--such as basketball player Latrell Sprewell, who attacked his coach--have escaped lasting punishment, ordinary people feel the same rules should apply to them. “We as a culture have so diminished the sense of honor that there is no need for conscience,” Josephson said.

The poll also found:

* Younger people have a more flexible sense of right and wrong. Respondents aged 18-34, for example, were far more likely to say they might claim lunch with a friend as a business expense than were those 55 and older.

* Orange County residents see more of an ethical decline over the last decade among elected officials than in the business world.

* Women are more concerned than are men about unethical behavior and spend more time talking about morals with their children.

The results match findings of other polls in recent years. A 1997 survey of employees by a business ethics group, for example, found as many as one in 10 admitted to cutting corners or deceiving customers. And 60% said they felt under greater stress than five years before.

A national Gallup Poll in 1996 found three in four Americans believed that the nation’s moral values had declined over the previous 25 years.

People who study ethics say that while the devil always has been in us, there have been deep foundational changes in American society in the last 10 to 15 years that have made it easier for Americans to justify doing wrong, either at work or in their neighborhoods.

What happened?

Ethicists point out that many public figures, from basketball star Sprewell to President Clinton, in recent years have set high-profile examples by recovering their careers after being dishonored in ways that would have been fatal in years past, ethicists say.

While most Americans still would say that lying and cheating are wrong, experts say these high-profile cases have taught the public to see ethical standards as less important than success, ethicists say.

“It trickles down to us . . . and the way we behave,” said Nan DeMars, president of Executary Services, a Minneapolis-based business ethics consulting firm. “People say, ‘He’s a nice guy,’ ” she said, and as a result, infidelity “seems more normal to the rest of us.”

“People have lost the incentive to be a good person,” said Josephson, the Marina del Rey ethicist. “There is less embarrassment today. Once [bad behavior] becomes the norm, then there’s no moral disapproval, then there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Ethics experts also point to economic changes that make it increasingly rare for a person to work for one company, or live in the same city, all their life. That, they say, has weakened loyalties to peers and employers.

In a time when Americans believe their companies would lay them off without a qualm, “it’s every man for himself,” said Brian Schrag, an official with the Assn. for Practical and Professional Ethics in Bloomington, Ill. That sort of disconnection, he said, makes it easier to justify cheating a company, or disregard a neighbor.

A final trend is that Americans also have become more competitive than ever, experts say.

“We’re in a knowledge economy,” said Michael G. Daigneault, president of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington. “The pace of change and human innovation is much faster than it ever was. You succeed faster, you fail faster.”

Beyond that, Daigneault said, Americans are evermore embracing entrepreneurship and believe--what with advertisements touting 25-year-old millionaires--that early financial independence is within reach. That adds to a pervasive “every-man-for-himself and ends-justify-the-means” philosophy.

Three of six ethics experts contacted for this story mentioned a recent case at the Los Angeles Times as an example of wayward business practices: The newspaper’s publisher agreed to split advertising profits from a Sunday Magazine issue devoted to the Staples Center with the arena itself, creating an uproar among journalists who saw it as a serious ethical breach and conflict of interest. She later apologized for the deal, which was not revealed to the newsroom until after the issue was printed, and asked Times journalists to draw up a set of guidelines on integrity and editorial independence, a process that is now underway.

“Do corporations have any moral obligation other than to their stockholders?” Schrag asked. “A case can be made that there are obligations to stakeholders--the community, and employees.” The results of the Times poll in Orange County were not all negative; 85% of respondents said it is never acceptable to cheat on taxes, and 92% said adultery is never acceptable.

Women appeared to be more ethically grounded than men: 27% of women said it was sometimes or always acceptable to claim lunch with a friend as a business expense; compared with 41% of men.

But many Orange County residents who responded to the poll agreed with experts that society’s ethical standards have taken a terrible turn--and many were pessimistic about the future.

“We live in a no-consequence culture,” said Adelle Manos of Huntington Beach, a teacher at Garden Grove Christian School. “If some kids get into a fight, we ask, ‘Why did they fight? . . . ‘Did they come from a divorced family?’ How about, ‘No, they made a choice; expel them for a year.’ ”

Manos said Americans were too accepting of Clinton’s misdeeds, shrugging them off because the economy has done well under his leadership. She laments what she calls “our confessional society,” in which “if we just admit what we did, [the bad behavior] becomes fine.”

Sunday: Orange County adults worry that academic cheating has become pervasive--but many are willing to bend the rules to help their children get a competitive edge.

Monday: People are still making up their minds about new ethical issues raised by the growth of the Internet, holding widely divergent views about right and wrong online.

Today: Many residents believe the pressure to succeed makes people behave less ethically, and experts look to underlying social change for explanations.

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About the Poll

The poll was conducted by Baldassare Associates for the Orange County Edition of The Times. The random telephone survey of 600 Orange County adults was conducted Oct. 13 through 17. The margin of error for the total sample is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Statistically, this means there is a 95% chance that the results would fall inside that range if every adult resident in Orange County were interviewed. For subgroups the margin of error is larger.

ETHICS AND GETTING AHEAD

Many Orange County residents say increasing pressure to succeed in today’s society has led people to behave less ethically.

PERSONAL LIFE

Q: Do you think that pressure to succeed makes people behave more or less morally and ethically, or does it make no difference?

*--*

x O.C. 18-34 35-54 55+ More ethically 19% 22% 15% 22% Less ethically 45 39 53 39 No difference 30 30 27 33 Don’t know 6 9 5 6

*--*

Q: In general, do you think Orange County has become more or less moral and ethical in the past 10 years or has there been no change?

*--*

x More Less No change Don’t Know People 17% 42% 26% 15% Elected Officials 14 40 26 20 Businesses 19 30 36 15

*--*

Q: Do you think the below action, if undetected, is always acceptable/sometimes acceptable?

A: Claiming lunch with a friend as a business expense

B: Cheating on income taxes

C: Having an affair

*--*

x O.C. 18-34 35-54 55+ Men Women A 34% 43% 30% 28% 41% 27% B 14 19 11 12 18 10 C 8 7 7 9 8 6

*--*

MORAL MATRIX

In ethical challenges presented to Orange County residents spanning a range of subjects, helping children get a competitive edge with school projects ranked as most acceptable--and marital infidelity as the least.

Percent saying behavior was always/sometimes acceptable:

Having parents help on a project supposed to be done by student alone: 62%

Using an employer’s computer to surf the Internet or send personal e-mail: 52%

Claiming lunch with a friend as a business expense: 34%

Trading copyrighted music or computer games on the Internet: 29%

Copying computer software without paying for it: 25%

Misrepresenting one’s self in an on-line chat room, mesage board or through e-mail: 24%

Downloading term-papers from the Internet: 20%

Getting copies of test questions in advance: 17%

Cheating on one’s income taxes: 14%

Copying another person’s work: 11%

Having an extramarital affair: 8%