The Influences Of Social Comparison And Implicit Theories About Willpower On Moral License

Taking the Moral Self-Regulation theory perspective,the current study explored the relationships between Moral Consistency and Moral License.Previous research on moral consistency revealed that people whose moral self-concept is salient are more likely to present moral behaviors.Opposite findings from researches on moral license argued that people will display more immoral behaviors after showing prosocial behaviors.Moral psychologists believed that human's moral self-regulation is a dynamic process,and people constantly engaged in cost–benefit calculations.Using self-regulation as the theoretical framework,the current study examined the effects of Social Comparison and Implicit Theories about Will Power will on Moral License.Using Sequential behavior paradigms,Study 1 examined the relationship between Moral Consistency and Moral License with Social Comparison as the moderating variable.Findings indicated that people who experience upward social comparison were more likely to show moral consistent behavior whereas those who experience downward social comparison showed neither moral consistent behavior nor moral license behavior.Study 2 examined the effect of Implicit Theories about Will Power on the relationship between Social Comparison and Moral Consistency.Results revealed that people who believed in limited self-control resources presented moral license behavior,and those who believed in unlimited self-control resources showed moral consistent behavior.In addition,for those people who believed in limited self-control resources,upward social comparison led to Moral Consistency and downward social comparison led to Moral License.