Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners

Abstract

The question of why people are motivated to act altruistically has been an important one for centuries, and across various disciplines. Drawing on previous research on moral regulation, we propose a framework suggesting that moral (or immoral) behavior can result from an internal balancing of moral self-worth and the cost inherent in altruistic behavior. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to write a self-relevant story containing words referring to either positive or negative traits. Participants who wrote a story referring to the positive traits donated one fifth as much as those who wrote a story referring to the negative traits. In Experiment 2, we showed that this effect was due specifically to a change in the self-concept. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings and extended them to cooperative behavior in environmental decision making. We suggest that affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally. However, when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.

Feel Good, Do-Good!? On Consistency and Compensation in Moral Self-Regulation

“…In both studies, we manipulated whether participants had a salient self as a moral versus an immoral person relying on an established priming procedure that asks participants to describe and recall a situation in which they acted in a moral (versus immoral) manner (see e.g., Aquino et al, 2009;Sachdeva et al, 2009). This allowed us to capture moral consistency (i.e., high levels of prosocial behavior when a self-definition as moral is salient) as well as moral compensation People need cognitive resources to override short-term, reactive impulses in order to proactively pursue high standards and desirable long-term goals (Baumeister, 2002;Fishbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003;Hofmann et al, 2009;Mischel, 1974).…”

“…Recently, researchers who are interested in behavioral ethics and moral psychology have started to study these moment-to-moment balancing acts between prosocial and self-interested behavior 1 . This research has revealed important roles for the self and selfregulation processes in shaping our moral behaviors (Aquino, Freeman, Reed, Lim, & Felps, 2009;Blasi, 1983;Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009;Zhong, Liljenquist, & Cain, 2009). …”

“…In the immoral conditions, participants described, for instance, situations in which they were unfaithful to their partner, or when they stole something. Similar methods have been used in both moral compensation Moral Self-Regulation, Consistency, and Compensation 11 (Jordan et al, 2011;Mazar & Zhong, 2010;Sachdeva et al, 2009), and moral consistency studies (Aquino et al, 2009;Reed et al, 2007).Subsequently, participants completed the cognitive depletion task (taken from Baumeister et al, 1998, Study 4). As noted, depleting participants' cognitive resources is a common way to impair cognitive capacity, which hinders the ability to focus on and strive for long-term goals and causes people to engage in behaviors that are driven by short-term considerations (DeWall et al, 2008;Gino et al, 2011).…”

“…A proactive focus will thus induce people to infer their moral personality from their moral self-concept, which promotes behavior in line with this inferred moral personality (Albarracín & Wyer, 2000;Blasi, 1983;Fishbach & Dhar, 2005). Summarizing, we argue that for moral consistency to occur, people who have a salientMoral Self-Regulation, Consistency, and Compensation 6 self-concept as a moral person assume from this self-concept that they are a moral person, and act accordingly to confirm and build their reputation as a moral person.Research on moral compensation and licensing, on the other hand, reveals that compensation and licensing result from short-term fluctuations in moral self-worth (Khan & Dhar, 2007;Monin & Miller, 2001;Sachdeva et al, 2009). This suggest that moral compensatory behaviors are likely to be driven by reactive reputational considerations (Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008;Zhong et al, 2009), rather than proactive considerations with a long term outlook aimed at building and maintaining one's reputation.…”

Thick as Thieves? Dishonest Behavior and Egocentric Social Networks

“…We adapted methods that have been shown to influence one's moral identity (Reed, Aquino, & Levy, 2007;Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009 desk, and letter. All participants were then asked to write a short story about themselves using the words they received.…”