Self-interest, automaticity, and the psychology of conflict of interest

Abstract

This paper argues that self-interest and concern for others influence behavior through different cognitive systems. Self-interest is automatic, viscerally com-pelling, and often unconscious. Understanding one’s ethical and professional obligations to others, in contrast, often involves a more thoughtful process. The automatic nature of self-interest gives it a primal power to influence judgment and make it difficult for people to understand its influence on their judgment, let alone eradicate its influence. This dual-process view offers new insights into how conflict of interest operate and it suggests some new avenues for addressing them or limiting some of their greatest dangers. KEY WORDS: conflict of interest; dual process; self-interest; professionalism. Conflicts of interest are at the heart of many of the recent scandals that have shaken the U.S. economy. Conflicts of interest like those between a firm’s man-agers, its shareholders, and its auditors have existed for some time. Why is it that they have recently resulted in such colossal business failures?3 A common theme in many discussions of recent scandals is that problems have followed changes in pro-fessional mindset. In earlier times, auditors saw their task as that of a detective—to ferret out errors and inconsistencies in the client’s accounts. For example, Arthur Andersen, in his early days as an auditor, discovered that a large client of his was inflating profit reports by incorrectly classifying routine expenses as capital in-vestments. When the client demanded that Andersen provide a clean audit report