The Impact Of The Representational Perspective On The Moral Licensing Effect

Moral licensing effect means a balancing tendency to behave unethically or selfishly after performing ethical or moral behaviors.But this kind of moral psychological balance or compensation model does not always work.In some cases,previous moral behaviors lead to subsequent consistent behavior.These inconsistent results implied possible moderators that could affect moral licensing effect.Findings from construal level theory suggested that individuals were more likely to behave consistently under a high construal level compared,whereas that they were more likely to behavior in a compensatory way under a low construal level.Visual imagery perspective is an attribute of the pictures in mind when individuals recall and imagine events.From a first-person perspective,an individual sees the scene from his/her own eyes and could only see sceneries around him/her,whereas from a third-person perspective,an individual sees the scene from an observer perspective and could see himself/herself in the scene.Based on the relation between imagery perspective and construal level,this study hypothesizes that the imagery perspective and initial moral behavior interacted to affect subsequent moral behaviors.Specifically,when recalling or imagining from the first perspective,previous moral behaviors were less likely to induce subsequent moral behaviors compared with previous immoral or neutral behaviors.In contrast,when recalling or imagining from the third perspective,individuals were more likely to display consistent behaviors that previous moral behaviors lead to subsequent moral behaviors.The hypothesis was tested with two experiments.Experiment 1 investigated the effects of different perspectives on moral behavioral tendencies when recalling moral versus immoral experiences.The results confirmed the interaction effect.Specifically,in the first perspective,participants who recalled an immoral experience scored higher on subsequent moral decisions than those who recalled a moral experience.In the third perspective,there was no significant difference in moral behavioral tendencies between those who recalled a moral versus an immoral experience.Experiment 2 explored the effects of different perspectives on subsequent moral tendencies in imagining a moral versus a neutral behavior.The results again confirmed the interaction effect between imaginative perspective and initial behavior on pro-social behavior tendencies.Specifically,in the first perspective,participants who imagined a neutral behavior tended to be more pro-social than those who imagined a pro-social behavior.In the third perspective,there was no significant difference in pro-social tendencies between those who imagined a pro-social behavior versus a neutral behavior.This study partially confirmed the moderation effect of imagery perspective on moral licensing effect.The typical moral licensing effect occurred in the first-person perspective and diminished in the third-person perspective.The theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed.