Where does moral licensing collide?

The construct at its founding demonstration: after people first establish that they are not prejudiced, they feel freer to express an opinion that would otherwise look biased. Monin and Miller's 2001 Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice showed that participants who had earlier disagreed with blatantly sexist statements, or endorsed a minority candidate, were then more willing to favour a man for a stereotypically male job. The prior good act works like a credential that certifies the later choice as acceptable. This laboratory effect is the same loosening of restraint that the mechanism accounts, the consumer studies, and the environmental research each name and measure in their own way.[1]

Unit

One person's willingness to act on a bias after an earlier good act

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Observed as the rise in a questionable choice among people given a prior chance to display virtue

The same phenomenon framed as a question of mechanism, and given two competing readings of how the prior good act does its work. Merritt, Effron, and Monin's 2010 review Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad separated a moral credits account, in which a good deed builds up a balance that a later lapse draws down, from a moral credentials account, in which a good deed changes how an ambiguous later act is interpreted rather than paying for it. The two are not two constructs but two proposed engines for one effect, the loosening of moral restraint after a display of virtue, which is exactly what the founding study, the marketing research, and the environmental literature observe under other labels.[2]

Unit

The route by which an earlier good act licenses a later lapse

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Distinguished by whether the licensing depends on a running moral balance or on the reinterpretation of an ambiguous act

The same loosening studied as consumer choice: making or even just intending a virtuous, effortful selection first makes people more likely to pick a self-indulgent option afterwards. Khan and Dhar's 2006 Licensing effect in consumer choice showed that a prior altruistic intention raised the later preference for a luxury over a necessity, and traced it to a boost in how moral people saw themselves. Framed in marketing as a licensing effect on purchases, it is once more the release of restraint after a good act that the social and moral psychology literatures name in their own terms, measured here in what a shopper chooses rather than in a biased judgment.[3]

Unit

A consumer's preference for an indulgent option after a prior virtuous act

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured by the shift toward luxury or indulgent choices after a virtuous choice or intention

The same construct as it appears in research on pro-environmental behaviour, where it is usually named negative spillover: doing one green thing, such as recycling, can lower the chance of doing the next, as if the first act had earned permission to relax. Truelove, Carrico, Weber, Raimi, and Vandenbergh's 2014 review Positive and negative spillover of pro-environmental behavior set out a framework in which moral licensing is one route to this negative carry-over between behaviours. Here the loosening of restraint is tracked across real conservation actions over time, but it is the same effect that the founding prejudice study, the mechanism accounts, and the consumer research each describe.[4]

Unit

The drop in a second green behaviour following a first

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured as the change in the likelihood of a later pro-environmental act after an earlier one