Author(s)

Rutherford Card Johnson^1,2

¹University of Minnesota Crookston, Crookston, MN, USA.
²Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge, MA, USA.

The topic of ethics in economics, finance, and business certainly seems to be at the forefront of the news in recent times. Although ethical concerns are nothing new, efforts to change the culture of the economy have changed in recent times. Today both academia and the professional world, in part due to public demand, are seeking new ways to solve old problems stemming from ethical considerations. Some approaches focus on financial and regulatory incentives. Another approach is to change the underlying moral code of individuals and the business environment as a whole. In that way, ethical behaviour becomes part of an individual’s own code of conduct rather than a simple response to financial incentives. Such a change requires an internal philosophical shift within an individual. For it to have a wide-sweeping effect on the business and financial landscape, a critical number of individuals must experience such an internal shift. This study considers the landscape of ethics in the economics and then considers the cognitive shift process known as the Overview Effect, recently popularized in National Geographic’s new television series, One Strange Rock, as a means to provide insight into improving the ethical environment in economic.

Financial Crisis, Decision Strategy, Parallel Rationality, Behavioural Economics, Economic Ethics, Overview Effect

Johnson, R. (2018) The Psychology of the Overview Effect and Global Economic Ethics. Psychology, 9, 1695-1706. doi: 10.4236/psych.2018.97100.