Abstract
Six studies demonstrate the "pot calling the kettle black" phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Recalling an undeniable ethical failure, people experience ethical dissonance between their moral values and their behavioral misconduct. Our findings indicate that to reduce ethical dissonance, individuals use a double-distancing mechanism. Using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous and ethical (Studies 1, 2, 3). We show this mechanism is exclusive for ethical dissonance and is not triggered by salience of ethicality (Study 4), general sense of personal failure, or ethically neutral cognitive dissonance (Study 5). Finally, it is characterized by some boundary conditions (Study 6). We discuss the theoretical contribution of this work to research on moral regulation and ethical behavior.
Highlights
Utilizing the fundamental attribution error (FAE, for review, see Tetlock, 1985; Harvey, Town, & Yarkin, 1981), we described cases in which people engaged in unethical behaviors, and asked participants to judge the extent to which the misconduct attested to the person’s personality or reflected situational circumstances
General Discussion In this paper, we used the term ethical dissonance to describe the experience triggered by a disparity between people’s unethical behavior and the values associated with their moral self-image
Mild cases of ethical dissonance are solved by a variety of strategies that bound people’s ethicality and allow them to be generally unaware of their misconduct, dismiss or justify their behavior, and gradually relax their ethical criteria
Summary
Using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous and ethical (Studies 1, 2, 3) We show this mechanism is exclusive for ethical dissonance and is not triggered by salience of ethicality (Study 4), general sense of personal failure, or ethically-neutral cognitive dissonance (Study 5). We propose that when people cannot deny their own misconduct, they engage in a double-distancing mechanism: using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous. In a chance task, where payment was based on a die roll, participants lied and reported higher numbers in about 40% of the cases (Fischbacher & Heusi, 2008; Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf, & De Dreu, 2011) In these studies, participants cheated only ―by a little bit‖ rather than to the maximum extent possible
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