Reactions of Consumers to Government Wrongdoing: The Case of the Food and Drug Administration

Abstract We investigate how and under what conditions perceived wrongdoing of a government organization (i.e., The Food and Drug Administration) leads to mistrust and other negative reactions to the institution. The “how” questions were addressed by specifying a model drawing upon two theories from moral psychology: the social intuitionist model (Haidt, The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, Vintage, 2012) and the theory of dyadic morality (Schein and Gray, Personality and Social Psychology Review 22:32–70, 2018). Our integration of these two theories proposes that consumer reactions to perceived institutional wrongdoing are serially mediated by contempt, anger, and disgust and by the likelihood of possible harm to them. The “when” question (i.e., the conditions under which negative reactions arise) was addressed by drawing upon moral identity theory, whereby we hypothesized that perceived organizational wrongdoing influences negative moral emotions and harm to the extent that people have a strong personal moral identity (Aquino et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97:123–141, 2009; Blasi, A. (2004). Moral functioning: Moral understanding and personality, U: Moral development, self and identity, ur. Lapsley, Daniel K. i Darcia, Narvaez, Mahwah, 335–347.). Hypotheses are tested on a random sample of 204 U.S. adults. Policy implications are discussed. The results suggest that government organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration need to better communicate with their constituents about their value to them. For example, the FDA should provide cases of how they promote safe medication use that protect the consumers from harm.