Abstract
Occasional acts of immorality are commonplace. One way in which people deal with their own prior immoral acts, is to rationalize why their acts are morally acceptable. It has been argued that such post hoc moral rationalizations may contribute to continuation or escalation of immoral behavior. This paper experimentally tests this causal influence of post hoc moral argumentation on escalation of immoral behavior and also tests how this depends on people’s level of moral identity. In three experiments we asked participants to generate moral arguments for their past behaviors. The results show that engaging in moral rationalization causes subsequent continuation and escalation of previous immoral behavior, but more so for low moral identifiers than for high moral identifiers.
Highlights
People occasionally engage in acts of behavior that can be considered as ethically questionable
How can the influence of moral rationalization on the escalation of unethical behavior depend on moral identity? it might seem that post hoc moralization is a more important strategy for people with a high moral identity, we argue that moral rationalizations would have little impact on the escalation of unethical behavior among those with a high moral identity
For the regression analyses cross products were calculated for the interaction terms
Summary
People occasionally engage in acts of behavior that can be considered as ethically questionable. For example, will at some point tell a lie, or benefit themselves at the expense of others Not all these behaviors will be severe, and oftentimes it may even be unclear whether behaviors should be seen as unethical. Research on ethical behavior has focused on explaining why people engage in unethical acts by focusing on what caused the act; e.g., by asking why people would put their own interests first (e.g., Murphy and Dacin, 2011; Moore et al, 2012), or whether some people are more likely to engage in unethical behaviors than others (e.g., Berry et al, 2007; Tijdink et al, 2016) It should be acknowledged, that even good people who care about morality, sometimes engage in unethical behaviors (Bersoff, 1999; Mazar et al, 2008; De Cremer, 2011; Bazerman and Sezer, 2016).
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