Critical Thinking Essay on Unethical Decision-making Case

One of my personal experiences where i employed unethical decision-making was when I took some money from my parents to purchase a phone. This happened last year when I took $12,000 from my mothers purse without her knowledge and permission and used the entire cash to have fun and buy a fancy mobile phone. I had joined a group of friends who had better electronic gadgets than me, and I felt like the odd one out since I did not own the latest phone and laptop. I wanted to keep my friends and prove to them that I would match their standards so that they could take me as one of them. Since I did not have much savings at that time since I had used them the previous weekend, that would enable me to purchase an iPhone and to borrow from friends would create a bad image, I thought the best option was taking some money from my mother. My mother has a business and does her bookkeeping transactions and reconciliation on Friday nights every week. I was aware that every Friday, my mother came with more cash in her purse than any other day in the week and I used that as an opportunity to get what I wanted. In addition, I knew that my parents have so much trust in me they would not think I took the money, as they would blame our housekeeper. I had it all planned, and nothing would keep me away from getting my dream phone.

My egocentrism nature was evident in the way I was unable to separate my thoughts from reality (Gazova et al., 2012). I was only thinking in own perspective and interests ignoring that our housekeeper might not be in that day or my mother might not carry cash that day. I was only thinking of how I could satisfy myself ignoring the fact that my mother might have had bills to pay the cash. I also ignored the fact that my parents pay all my bills and even helped purchase the phone I was using at that time (Driver & Pouget, 2010). Some of the pathological tendencies of mind evident from my unethical decision-making are egocentric blindness as I failed to notice facts, which contradicted with values taught by my parents against stealing, and egocentric absurdity when I created perfect scenarios in my head thinking of the repercussions of my actions (Meisel et al., 2013).

I should have applied keys to sound decision-making and approach the situation in an objective and rational way. First, I had the option to break away from my friends, as I could not keep up with the demands and social status quo. This was the best option, as I would have made other friends who would not put me into temptations of stealing so that I can fit in their group. On the other hand, I should have asked for cash from my parents directly. There is a high probability that they would have given me the cash on request since they have always provided for me things I needed and others I had not even asked them. Asking my parents for the cash would have reduced the probability of developing the strained relationship I have had with them for the past one year since they have no trust in me anymore in matters related to finances.

References

Driver, J., & Pouget, A. (2010). Object-centered visual neglect, or relative egocentric neglect?. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(3), 542-545.

Gazova, I., Vlcek, K., Laczo, J., Nedelska, Z., Hyncicova, E., Mokrisova, I., ... & Hort, J. (2012). Spatial navigationa unique window into physiological and pathological aging. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 4.

Meisel, M. K., Clifton, A. D., MacKillop, J., Miller, J. D., Campbell, W. K., & Goodie, A. S. (2013). Egocentric social network analysis of pathological gambling. Addiction, 108(3), 584-591.