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Prospective moral licensing: Does anticipating doing good later allow you
to be bad now?
Jessica Cascio, E. Ashby Plant ⁎
Florida State University, USA
HIGHLIGHTS
•Anticipating engaging in a moral behavior allows people to behave immorally now.
•People who anticipate performing a future moral action display more racial bias.
•Prospective moral licensing occurred for both ambiguous and overt prejudice.
•Prospective moral licensing is likely due to moral credits accumulating.
•Prejudice can be licensed by moral behavior in a different domain.
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 8 May 2014
Revised 18 September 2 014
Available online 28 September 2014
Keywords:
Anticipated behavior
Moral licensing
Moral credits
Prejudice
Moral licensing, wherebybehaving morally allows a person to subsequently behave immorally, has been demon-
strated in numerous experiments. The current research examined the effects of prospectivemoral licensing: how
planning to perform a future moral behavior affects the morality of current behavior. Across four studies we ex-
plored whether anticipating engaging in a moral behavior in the future (e.g., taking part in a fundraiser or donat-
ing blood) leads people to make a racially biased decision (Studies 1 and 2) or espouse racially biased attitudes
(Studies 3 and 4) in the present. Participants who anticipated performing a moral action in the future displayed
more racial bias than control participants. Additionally, prospective moral licensing occurred for both ambigu-
ously and overtly prejudiced acts suggesting that prospective licensing is due to moral credits accumulating rath-
er than moral credentials being established. These results demonstrate that anticipating a future moral act
licenses people to behave immorally now and indicate that perceptions of morality encompass a wide variety
of concepts, including past as well as anticipated future behavior.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Imagine the following scenario: George is a middle-aged, White
manager in the human resources department at a mid-sized company.
While at work, George sees a poster advertising a canned food drive
next week for a local food bank, and he decides that he will bring in
some cans when the drive begins. George heads to his office and is
faced with hiring a new employee. He must choose between two
qualified candidates: one Black, one White. Does planning to do good
next week (i.e., bringing in canned goods next week for the food
drive) make it more likely that George will respond with racial bias in
this hiring decision and favor the White candidate over the Black
candidate today?
The above scenario illustrates the idea that was explored in this
paper: prospective moral self-licensing. Does planning to act morally
in the future allow one to act immorally in the present? For example,
if you plan on donating to a food drive next week, are you more likely
to express an ingroup racial preference now? Across four studies we
demonstrate that when people plan to engage in moral behavior in
the future, it makes them more likely to respondin a morally question-
able way in the present.
Moral licensing
Being moral is important to a person's identity (e.g., Aquino & Reed,
2002). When making morally relevant decisions, people may survey
their previous behavior. If they can point to past moral behavior, it can
make them less concerned about engaging in behavior that is morally
dubious because they are confident in their overall morality. Monin
and Miller (2001) first demonstrated this moral self-licensing by show-
ing that participants were more likely to make morally ambiguous
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
⁎Corresponding authorat: Department of Psychology, FloridaState University,P.O. Box
3064301, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4301, USA.
E-mail address: plant@psy.fsu.edu (E.A. Plant).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.09.009
0022-1031/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp
decisions (e.g., say a job was better suited for a White candidate) after
first performing a nonprejudiced behavior (e.g., selecting a minority
candidate for a different job). Monin and Miller argued that engaging
in nonprejudiced behavior provides people with a feeling of secure
moral self-worth, which allows for the subsequent honest expression
of their prejudiced attitudes. This effect has since been demonstrated
across many studies and behaviors. For example, supporting a Black
political candidate licenses White people to exhibit a subsequent
preference for Whites over Blacks, particularly among more racially
prejudiced White people (Effron, Cameron, & Monin, 2009). Simply
choosing to buy green products (Mazar & Zhong, 2010) can license peo-
ple to later cheat and steal.
In addition to moral behaviors licensing subsequent immoral ac-
tions, licensing effects can occur without an individual actually engaging
in moral behavior at the time of the licensing. Thinking about past moral
behavior (Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011) or writing about oneself
as a moral person (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009) can decrease the
likelihood of subsequently performing charitable acts. Having a friend
who is a minority group member (Bradley-Geist, King, Skorinko, Hebl,
& McKenna, 2010), expressing support for gay rights or espousing
nonprejudiced beliefs (Krumm & Corning, 2008) can all license morally
dubious behavior. A few studies have even demonstrated that imagin-
ing performing a moral act can license future unethical behavior
(Khan & Dhar, 2006; Zhong, Ku, Lount, & Murnighan, 2010).
The robust nature of the moral licensing effect led us to hypothesize
that people may license themselves to engage in morally ambiguous be-
havior after merely planning toengage in future moral behavior. That is,
people may not have to actually engage in a moral behavior or recall or
imagine themselves engagingin a moral behavior, it may be enough just
to expect thatthey will engage in moral behavior at a later point. Consis-
tent with our prediction, Khan and Dhar (2007) showed that when peo-
ple think they can choose a more virtuous item later (e.g., a highbrow
movie or healthy snack), they are more likely to choose a frivolous
item in the present (e.g., a lowbrow movie or cookie). We suspect that
people will similarly license themselves to engage in immoral behavior
when they expect that they will be able to demonstrate their morality at
alaterpoint.Khan and Dhar (2006) demonstrated that participants felt
licensed even by making costless, hypothetical decisions about future
moral behavior. Although it is possible that people frequently imagine
these hypothetical moral situations, we suspect that it is more likely
that people, presented with a future opportunity, actually plan to do
good later. By showing that people can gain morally licensing from ac-
tions that they anticipate they will do, rather than actions that they
could do, we more closely capture how moral licensing for future events
would occur in the real world.
Providing some insight into why such prospective moral licensing
may occur, research examining goal pursuit has demonstrated that
when people expect to engage in goal-relevant behavior in the future
(e.g., being healthy), they are more likely to act counter to their goal
in the present if they perceive their expectation of future goal-relevant
behavior as indicating goal progress as opposed to goal commitment
(Zhang, Fishbach, & Dhar, 2007). If people perceive that their prospec-
tive moral behavior represents progress toward their goal of being a
moral person, then it may lead to moral licensing in the near term.
The current research
The current research examined the effects of prospective moral self-
licensing: how planning to perform a future moral behavior affects the
morality of current behavior. Across four studies we explored whether
anticipating engaging in a moral behavior in the future (e.g., taking
part in a fundraiser or donating blood) leads people to make a racially
biased decision (Studies 1 and 2) or espouse racially biased attitudes
(Studies 3 and 4) in the present. In our first two studies we examined
whether people would be more likely to respond with racial bias on a
hiring task after first planning to engage in a moralactivity in the future
as compared to no future moral behavior planned. In the first study, par-
ticipants committed to taking part in a charity event and then decided
whether a White or Black candidate would be better suited for a posi-
tion (Monin & Miller, 2001). In the second study, we explored whether
prospective moral licensing would occur when participants did not
commit but merely indicated that they anticipated taking part in the
charity event prior to making the hiring decision.
In Studies 3 and 4, we tested the boundary conditions of prospective
moral licensing. Specifically, we examined whether anticipating engag-
ing in future moral behavior would license unambiguously racially bi-
ased behavior. This methodological approach may also provide
important insight into the processes involved in prospective moral li-
censing. Moral licensing can occur when people's behavior either estab-
lishes their moral credentials or provides moral credits (see Merritt,
Effron, & Monin, 2010 for review). When people's behavior establishes
their moral credentials, it bolsters their perception that they are good
and moral people, which allow them to interpret future behavior with
a positive bias that presumes morality. Such moral credentials aid
the reinterpretation of ambiguous behavior but would not aid in
interpreting unambiguously immoral behavior ina positive light. There-
fore, if prospective moral licensing has its effect by establishing moral
credentials, we would not anticipate that prospective moral licensing
would extend to overtly prejudiced behavior.
In contrast, when people engage in moral behavior it can provide
them with moral credits, a moral currency, that can be spent at a later
date by engaging in immoral behavior. Moral credits do not require
reinterpreting behavior and can lead to the licensing of overtly immoral
as well as more ambiguously immoral behavior. Thus, if prospective
moral licensing establishes moral credits, we would expect to see its ef-
fects on overt as well as subtle behavior. In Study 3, participants
responded to a series of items regarding their attitudes toward Black
people that varied in how subtle or overt they were. In Study 4, partic-
ipants completed items measuring their endorsement of overtly nega-
tive stereotypes of Black people. Examining if people were willing to
express overt prejudice may provide insight into the processes involved
in prospective moral licensing.
Finally, in previous studies looking at moral licensing of prejudiced
responses (Bradley-Geist et al., 2010; Effron, Miller, & Monin, 2012;
Effron et al., 2009; Kouchaki, 2011; Merritt et al., 2012; Monin & Miller,
2001), the individuals were licensed by engaging in nonprejudiced acts,
keeping both behaviors within the domain of prejudice. We examined
whether planning a moral act not related to prejudice would license
someone to express prejudice. That is, does engaging in moral behavior
unrelated to prejudice license racially prejudiced behavior?
Study 1
Study 1 was designed as an initialtest of prospective moral licensing.
Participants were asked to agree to a future moral behavior, participat-
ing in a fund raiser laterin the semester, andthen were given the chance
to make a potentially biased decision abouta Black candidate ona hiring
task. We purposely selected a fundraising event that wassomewhat un-
usual (a Skip-A-Meal fundraiser) to increase the likelihood that partici-
pants had never previously engaged in such an event. The goal was to
avoid having participants recall past moral behavior or have a clear
image of what the event would be like, so that they would only focus
on the future moral act. We predicted that agreeing to take part in the
future fundraiser would license our participants to make a racially
biased decision in the present (say a job was better for a White than
Black candidate).
Method
Participants
Participants were 106 non-Black undergraduate students at a large
public university in the southern United States. Participants were
111J. Cascio, E.A. Plant / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
recruited through an online sign-up system and participated in ex-
change for partial fulfillment toward a course requirement. Eleven par-
ticipants (11.3% of the total sample) did not agree to the moral request
and were also excluded from the primary analysis. This left 86 total par-
ticipants for analyses (69.8% female; 76% White non-Hispanic, 16% His-
panic, 6% multiracial, 1% Native American and 1% Asian).
Procedure
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions:
prospective moral behavior (n= 41) or control (n=45). Upon entering
the lab, participants in the prospective moral behavior condition were
asked whether they were interested in taking part in a fundraiser. The
experimenter explained that the department would be
…holding a Skip-A-Meal fundraiser for the Red Cross at the end of
the semester …. The way the fundraiser would work is that students
volunteer to skip 1–2 meals during the event …. The price of the
meal skipped along with the price of the food thatwasnot produced
because of the reduction in students eating at the dining halls will be
donated to the Red Cross …Are you willing to participate in our
Skip-A-Meal fundraiser for the Red Cross?
Those who agreed to participate provided their email address to the
experimenter. All participants then completed the police hiring task
used by Monin and Miller (2001). For this task, participants were told
to assume the role of a police chief in a small town who is in charge of
hiring a new police officer. They were told that the population of the
small town is primarily White and racially prejudiced and the police de-
partment can be a hostile work environment for Black officers. They
were then asked if they felt that this specific position is better suited
for a Black or White officer. Answers were provided on a Likert-scale
from 1 (Yes, much better for a Black)to7(Yes, much better for a White).
Higher scores above the midpoint of 4 indicated preference for a
White over Black candidate.
1
After completing the experiment, partici-
pants were probed for suspicion and awarded credit. None of the partic-
ipants in the present or subsequent studies expressed suspicion that the
initial request was related to the rest of the study.
Results and discussion
At-test was conducted to compare responses on the hiring task be-
tween participants who agreed to the prospective moral behavior and
control participants.
2
Levine's Test of Equality of Variances was signifi-
cant, F(84) = 4.528, p= .036. Therefore, the t-test with equal variances
not assumed is reported. Results revealed that participants in thefuture
moral behavior condition were more likely to indicate that the job was
better suited for a White candidate (M= 4.62, SE = 0.13) than control
participants (M= 4.16, SE = 0.12), t(78.829) = 2.49, p= .015, d=
0.55. Thus, intending to perform a moral behavior in a few weeks led
to the expression of more racial bias in the moment.
We were interested in whether the participants on average indicat-
ed that the position would be bettersuited for a White than Black appli-
cant (i.e., did they express racial bias). One-sample t-tests comparing
participants' responses to the hiring task to the neutral response of 4
(indicating that race should not play a role in the decision) revealed
that participants in the future moral behavior condition on average
provided a racially biased response, t(40) = 3.95, pb.001, d= 0.62,
whereas the control participants on average did not, t(44) = .93, p=
.36. Thus, whereas control participants did not feel that race should
not play a role in the hiring decision, participants who had agreed to
take part in the fundraiser in a few weeks tended to indicate that the
job was better suited for a White than Black candidate. These findings
provide an initial demonstration of prospective moral licensing.
Study 2
Study 1 provided initial evidence of prospective moral licensing by
demonstrating that participants who expected to take part in a
fundraiser in a few weeks responded with more racial bias on a hiring
task. Study 2 was designed to replicate and extend Study 1. Participants
were once again told about the Skip-A-Meal fundraiser but instead of
having them commit and provide their email address, the experimenter
indicated that they were just taking a quick poll of students' interest in
the fundraiser. This allowed us to assess whether participants would
experience the prospective moral licensing effect when they had only
indicated whether they anticipated taking part but had not committed
to the fundraiser.
Method
Participants
Participants were 55 non-Black undergraduate students at a large
public university in the southern United States. Participants were
recruited through an online system and participated in exchange for
partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Four participants (7%) did
not agree to the moral request and were excluded from the analysis.
This left 51 participants (75% female; 69% White non-Hispanic, 24%
White Hispanic, 6% multiracial, 2% Asian).
Procedure
As in Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to the prospec-
tive moral behavior (n= 24) or control condition (n= 27).Upon enter-
ing the lab, participants in the prospective moral behavior condition
were asked whether they were interested in taking part in the same
fundraiser described in Study 1. They were told that organizers were
trying to get a feel of how many students would likely participate to
aid planning, and they were asked if they would take part if the
fundraiser occurred. Participants verbally answered “yes”or “no”and
the experimenter recorded their answer after leaving the room. All
participants then completed the police hiring task from Study 1. After
completing the experiment, participants were probed for suspicion
and awarded credit.
Results and discussion
At-test was conducted to compare responses on the hiring task be-
tween participants who agreed to the future moral behavior and control
participants. As in Study 1, the Levine's Test of Equality of Variances was
significant, F(49) = 8.94, p= .004. Results from the t-test with equal
variances not assumed revealed that, consistent with Study 1, partici-
pants in the prospective moral behavior condition expressed greater
preference for a White candidate (M= 4.54, SE = 0.20) than control
participants (M= 4.00, SE = 0.12), t(38.1) = 2.33, p=.025,d= 0.68.
Also, replicating Study 1, one-sample t-tests comparing participants'
responses to the hiring task to the neutral response of 4(indicating race
should not be a factor) revealed that participants in the future moral be-
havior condition provided responses that were significantly higher than
4, t(23) = 2.72, p=.012,d= 0.55, indicatingthatthey felt the job was
better suited for a White than Black officer. In contrast, the control
participants' responses on average did not differ from the midpoint, in-
dicating that they did not think race should play a role, t(26) = 0.00,
p= 1.00. Together these findings replicate Study 1 and indicate that
1
Examination of the data via nonparametric tests available in online supplement.
2
Examination of the responses of participants who declined the moral request (n=11,
M= 4.36, SE = .24) fell in between the two conditions and did not significantly differ
from eithercondition,tsb1, psN.35. This suggeststhat exposure to the fundraising oppor-
tunity was not enough to increase participants'racially biased behavior.Participants who
declined the moral request did not vary from other participants on demographics such as
gender,race, sexual orientation, andpolitical orientation. For thisand all subsequentstud-
ies, inclusion of theparticipants whodeclined the requestin the main analysisdid not sub-
stantially change the nature or pattern of the key finding, although in some cases the
inclusion weake ned the reported effect (e.g., in Study 1 t(80.76) = 2.2 0, p=.03,
d= 0.48).
112 J. Cascio, E.A. Plant / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
people whoanticipate they willengage in a moral behavior in the future
are more willing to respond in a racially biased manner in the present
even when they have not committed to the future moral behavior.
Study 3
Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that participants who are willing
to take part in a future fundraiser were morally licensed to show a
preference for White over Black candidates in a hiring task. In addi-
tion to providing an additional replication of the effect using a dif-
ferent future moral behavior and assessment of racial prejudice,
Study 3 was designed to test the boundary conditions of prospective
moral licensing. First, participants were asked about a different fu-
ture moral behavior, donating blood, and a different measure of ra-
cial prejudice was used, responses on the Attitudes Towards Blacks
scale (Brigham, 1993). Second, an additional control condition was
added to the design in which the participants were asked to perform
a future non-moral behavior. This way, we ruled out the possibility
that agreeing to any request, rather than a specifically moral re-
quest, results in more racially biased responding. Finally, we were
also interested in determining whether prospective moral licensing
occurs for overt as well as ambiguous prejudice-relevant behaviors.
The behavior assessed in both Study 1 and Study 2 was relatively
ambiguous, and participants may have interpreted their responses
as not being prejudiced (e.g., perceived the job as likely unpleasant
for a Black officer). Examining whether the prospective moral li-
censing effect extends to responses to overly racially biased items
on a self-report measure will provide insight into whether the li-
censing is due to moral credentials being established or moral
credits accumulating. If the moral licensing effect extends to the
overt items on the measure of racial prejudice, it suggests that
moral credits rather than moral credentials are at play in prospec-
tive moral licensing.
Method
Participants
Participants were 94 undergraduate students at a large public uni-
versity in the southern United States. Participants were recruited
through anonline system and participated in exchange for partial fulfill-
ment of a course requirement. The three participants who declined the
non-moral request and 10 participants who declined the moral request
(cumulatively 15% of the total sample) were excluded from the primary
analysis. This left 81 participants for analyses (49.4% female; 79% White
non-Hispanic; 10% Hispanic; 4% Asian, 6% multiracial, 1% unknown).
Procedure
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions:
moral behavior (n= 25), non-moral behavior (n= 29), and control
(n= 27). For the moral condition, participants were told:
Before we begin, we wanted to take aninformal survey. The Psychol-
ogy Department is interested in holding a blood donation drive in
the near future …. Would you be willing to donate blood if we held
a blood drive within the next few weeks?
The participant then answered “yes”or “no”and the experimenter
recorded their answer after leaving the room. Participants in the non-
moral condition received a similar prompt about a new email system:
Before we begin, we wanted to take aninformal survey. The Psychol-
ogy Department is interested implementing a new system for letting
students know when new studies are available ….Forthere-
searchers, the new system wouldn't be any different from the old
system but it would be better for the students …. Would you be will-
ing to use the new system should the PsychologyDepartment decide
to implement it?
Participants in all three conditions then completed the Attitudes To-
wards Black scale (ATB; Brigham, 1993). The ATB is a 20 item question-
naire that measures explicit racism toward Blacks. Example items
include “I would rather not have Blacks live in the same apartment
building I live in.”and “Generally, Blacks are not as smart as Whites.”
Items rated on a 1 (strongly disagree)to7(strongly agree) Likert-scale
and scored such that a higher score meant more prejudice toward
Blacks. After completing the experiment, participants were probed for
suspicion and awarded credit.
In order to identify themost overtly prejudiced items on the ATB, we
examined which items tended to have the lowest level of agreement.
We suspected that the items that had the lowest means would also be
the most blatantly prejudiced. We drewupon a dataset collectedaround
the same date from the same subject pool (i.e., undergraduates receiv-
ing course credit for participation, n= 106, 67% female; LaCosse &
Plant, 2014) and examined average item agreement. The items that
tended to have the lowest level of agreement also tended to beblatantly
prejudiced.
Next, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis with an Oblimin
rotation on the ATB items in the present study. Examination of the
scree plot indicated that there were three factors that accounted for
55% of the variance. One factor consisted of the six items that were rel-
atively subtle (e.g., “I enjoy a funny racial joke, even if some people
might find it offensive.”;“Some African-Americans are so touchy
about race that it is difficult to get along with them.”). These same six
items received the highest level of agreement in our alterative sample
described above. Another factor consisted of 4 of the 6 items that people
tended to be least likely to endorse and these items tended to be more
overt (e.g., “Black people and White people are inherently equal.”;“I
would not mind it at all if an African-American family with about the
same income and education as me moved in next door.”;“If I had a
chance to introduce African-American visitors to my friends and neigh-
bors, I would be pleased to.”;“If an African-American were put in charge
of me, I would not mind taking advice and direction from him or her.”).
These four item were combined to create the overt prejudice scale
(α= .86). A third factor consisted of most of the remaining items that
tended to fall in the middle in terms of participant endorsement.
Results and discussion
A one-way 3 (Future Moral vs. Future Nonmoral vs Control) ANOVA
was conducted on the overt prejudice scale. The analysis revealed that
condition significantly affected the amount of prejudice expressed,
F(2, 78) = 12.136, pb.001, η
2
=.07(seeFig. 1). Planned contrasts
were then used to compare the future moral licensing condition to
each of the other conditions. Participants in the future moral condition
(M= 2.87 SE = 0.23) expressed significantly more prejudice than par-
ticipants in the non-moral condition (M= 1.43, SE = 0.21) and than
control participants (M= 1.68, SE = 0.22), psb.001, ds = 1.14 and
0.89, respectively. Participants in the non-moral condition and control
condition did not differ from each other, p=.42.Itisworthnoting
that if the full 20-item version of the ATB is used, the pattern of results
is similar, although weaker, indicating that the effect tends to be stron-
ger for the more blatant items.
The present study replicated the prospective moral licensing effect
with a different future moral behavior and an explicit measure of racial
prejudice. Additionally, the fact that anticipating donating blood in the
future licensed even overtly prejudiced responses in the present, sug-
gests that prospective moral licensing likely provides moral credits
that people may use to justify expressing racial prejudice in the short
term. It is worth noting that participants who did not agree to the
moral request were removed from the reported analysis, although the
findings held even if they were included. However, these exclusions
could make the test of the hypothesis particularly conservative. It is pos-
sible that those individuals who feel comfortable declining a moral re-
quest may be the most likely to feel comfortable expressing racial
113J. Cascio, E.A. Plant / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
prejudice. If this is true, then excluding these participants from the con-
dition which would license the expression of prejudice would actually
bias the sample away from the hypotheses.
3
Participants who declined to donate blood (M= 1.75, SE = 0.30)
responded similarly to control participants, F(1,35) = .044, p=.84,re-
vealing that the prospective moral licensing effect was specifictothose
who agreed to the moral request. This provides further evidence that
simply activating morality (by making the request) does not create a
prospective moral licensing effect. Additionally, this effect was specific
to moral behaviors; participants who agreed to use the sign-up system
did not express any more prejudice than control participants.
Study 4
Study 3 demonstrated that participants who were willing to give
blood in the future were morally licensed to express overtly prejudiced
attitudes. The licensing of overt prejudice suggests that prospective
moral licensing is likely due to accumulating and spending moral
credits, rather than using moral credentials to reinterpret the behavior
as nonracist. Additionally, Study 3 showed that anticipating performing
a future moral act, rather than agreeing to any future task, led to moral
licensing. The present study was designed to provide a replication of
moral request vs. non-moral request conditions and provide further ev-
idence that prospective moral licensing is due to moral credits rather
than moral credentials. Participants were asked about either participat-
ing in a future fundraiser or using a new email system, and then they
completed an explicit measure of racial bias, a stereotype endorsement
measure. The endorsement of negative stereotypes of Black people rep-
resents overt unambiguous racial bias. If the moral licensing effect ex-
tends to overt stereotype endorsement, it provides further evidence
that prospective moral licensing is due to moral credits.
Method
Participants
Participants were 84 non-Black undergraduate students at a large
public university in the southern United States. For the present study,
we conducted a power analysis to determine the necessary sample
size drawing upon the effect size for the comparison between the
moral and non-moral request conditions from Study 3 (d=1.14).The
power analysis indicated that in order to have an 80% of finding an effect
of that magnitude witha p-value of .05, we would need 44participants.
However, we chose to collect a larger sample in order to ensure we
would be adequately powered to find an effect size more consistent
with the ones from first two studies. As in the other studies,participants
were recruited through an onlinesign-up system andparticipated in ex-
change for partial fulfillment of a course requirement. The four partici-
pants who declined the non-moral request and six participants who
declined the moral request (cumulatively 12% of the total sample)
were excluded from the primary analysis. This left 74 participants
(79.7% female; 62.2% White non-Hispanic, 21.6% White Hispanic, 9.5%
multiracial, 2.7% Asian).
Procedure
As in Study 3, participants were randomly assigned to the prospec-
tive moral behavior (n= 35)or non-moral behavior (n=39).Uponen-
tering the lab, participants in the prospective moral behavior condition
were asked whether they were interested in taking part in the same
Skip-A-Meal fundraiser described in Study 1. They were told that orga-
nizers were trying to get a feel of how many students would likely par-
ticipate to aid planning, and they were asked if they would take part if
the fundraiser occurred. Participants in the non-moral condition re-
ceived the prompt about a new email system described in Study 3. Par-
ticipants verbally answered “yes”or “no”and the experimenter
recorded their answer after leaving the room. Participants then com-
pleted a stereotype-endorsement measure. The 22 item measure in-
cluded 12 items that represented negative stereotypes about Blacks as
assessed by Devine and Elliot (1995) (i.e. violent, lazy, aggressive, crim-
inal, hostile, educated (reverse scored), reliable (reverse), hardworking
(reverse), trustworthy (reverse), wealthy (reverse), competent (re-
verse), intelligent (reverse)). Participants were asked please rate their
beliefs about Blacks on the traits, using the prompt “On average
African American/Black people are ….”Answers were provided on a
Likert-scale from 1 (Strongly disagree)to7(Strongly agree). Higher
scores indicated a stronger endorsement of negative Black stereotypes
(α= .87). After completing the experiment, participants were probed
for suspicion and awarded credit.
Results and discussion
At-test was conducted to compare responses on the stereotype en-
dorsement measure between participants who agreed to the future
moral behavior and participants who agreed to the future non-moral
behavior. As in previous studies, the Levine's Test of Equality of Vari-
ances was significant, F(72) = 4.01, p= .049. Results from the t-test
with equal variances not assumed revealed that participants in thepro-
spective moral behavior condition expressed stronger stereotype en-
dorsement (M=3.84, SE = 0.11) than non-moral request
participants (M= 3.39, SE = 0.14), t(69.34) = 2.57, p= .012, d=
0.59. The present study replicated the prospective moral licensing effect
with a different measure of racial bias, an explicit measure of racial
stereotyping. Additionally, the fact that anticipating participating in a
fundraiser licensed stronger endorsement of negative Black stereotypes
provides further evidence that prospective moral licensing working via
moral credits that people may use to justify expressing racial prejudice
in the short term.
General discussion
People can gain moral license from a large variety of moral actions
(e.g. Effron et al., 2009; Jordan et al., 2011; Mazar & Zhong, 2010;
Monin & Miller, 2001). The purpose of the present work wasto explore
whether people will license themselves for actions they anticipate
doing in the future, an effect we termed prospective moral licensing.
To this end, we allowed participants to indicate whether they were will-
ing to engage in charitable behavior in the future before assessing their
racial attitudes and behaviors. We hypothesized that those participants
who agreed to perform the future moral act would be more likely to ex-
press racial bias because they felt morally licensed to express prejudice
without diminishing their moral self-image. Consistent with our
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Overt Prejudice
Moral
Non-moral
Control
Fig. 1. Overt prejudice expressed as a function of experimental condition.
3
Thank you to the reviewers for this excellent point.
114 J. Cascio, E.A. Plant / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
hypothesis, we found evidence indicating that people can feel morally
licensed for actions they anticipate performing in the future.
Our results indicate that anticipating performing a moral act in
the future can license people to respond in a racially biased manner
in the present. This effect held regardless of whether people were
askedtocommitinwritingtoperformtheact(Study1)orjustver-
bally agree to perform the act (Studies 2–4). Additionally, this pro-
spective moral licensing occurred across a variety of anticipated
moral behaviors, such as participating in a fundraiser (Studies 1,
2, and 4) or donating blood (Study 3). The present work extends
the moral licensing literature by examining whether acts that
have not even been performed yet can license morally dubious be-
havior. These data show that non-Black people are more likely to
express both ambiguously and overtly anti-Black views in the pres-
ent when they anticipate being moral in the future. Therefore, pro-
spective moral licensing may allow people to reap the same
benefits as other forms of moral licensing without putting in any
actual moral work. If people can give themselves credit for what
they think they will do, they can maintain their self-perceptions
of morality while engaging in immoral acts. Additionally, if
people's self-images benefit from simply anticipating being
moral, there may be less incentive for them to actually follow
throughwiththemoralact(Gollwitzer, Sheeran, Michalski, &
Seifert, 2009). This may result in a decline in moral behavior.
Thus, prospective moral licensing may actually show an ironic ef-
fect of decreasing actual future moral behavior, once the benefits
have already been gained.
The present work also provides valuable insight into the processes
involved in prospective moral licensing. We were interested in whether
prospective moral licensing was due to the establishing moral creden-
tials or spending anticipated moral credits (see Merritt et al., 2010).
Given that moral credentialing relies on one's morality being proven,
we wondered whetheranticipating future moral behavior would be suf-
ficient to establish such credentials. The fact that prospective moral li-
censing licensed both ambiguously prejudiced acts (Studies 1 and 2)
and overtly prejudiced attitudes (Studies 3 and 4) indicates that pro-
spective licensing is due to moral credits accumulating rather than
moral credentials being established. This implies that, rather than
reinterpreting ambiguous behavior as nonprejudiced, these participants
were exchanging the moral credits from their anticipated moral behav-
ior to perform immoral, prejudiced behavior in the present. Consistent
with this proposition, Effron and Monin (2010) demonstrated that
when observers are determining how much to license an actor, they
consider moral credits rather than moral credentials when the moral
and immoral deeds are in different domains. That is, observers did not
reinterpret the actor's bad behavior but excused the behavior because
the actor had behaved morally in a different domain. If self-licensing
works in a similar manner, then the fact that the moral and possibly im-
moral behaviors were in different domains strengthens the case that
prospective moral licensing works due to moral credits.
Finally,this work expands the current knowledge of when prejudice
may be licensed. In previous research (Bradley-Geist et al., 2010; Effron
et al., 2009, 2012; Kouchaki, 2011; Merritt et al., 2012; Monin & Miller,
2001), participants first performed nonprejudiced acts which then li-
censed them to express their prejudice in a subsequent act, keeping
the acts in the same domain. In our studies, the licensing action was in
a domain not related to prejudice, yet participants still felt licensed to
express both ambiguously biased and overtly prejudiced views. That
is, prospective moral licensing of prejudice occurred even though the
anticipated moral behavior was not one that established the partici-
pants as nonprejudiced. Therefore, it may not be necessary to “prove”
you are nonprejudiced before acting in a prejudiced manner; simply
demonstrating you are moral (or will be moral in the future) is enough
to license ambiguous and overt prejudice. To our knowledge, this is the
first study to show that prejudice can be licensed by moral actions in a
separate domain.
Limitations and future directions
Because this was the first examination of prospective moral licens-
ing, there are many exciting avenues for future research. For example,
these finding highlight that people are willing to license themselves to
behave in morally dubious ways by giving themselves credit for some-
thing they have not actually done. Therefore, we may have to reassess
what is considered a moral act. Perhaps the participants, rather than ac-
tually intending to perform a future moral act, saw their agreement itself
as the moral act. Saying yes to donating may be seen as moral, regard-
less of actual intentions to donate. The last three studies, in which par-
ticipants were not required to provide any proof of their intentions,
speak to this idea. In the first study, participants thought they would
be held accountable for agreeing to participate so possibly only those
participants who really intended to do the behavior agreed to it. There-
fore, their intentions would create the prospective moral licensing.
However, for the final three studies, there was no way to hold the par-
ticipants accountable for what they said; it is likely then that some par-
ticipants agreed to the moral request even though they did not actually
intend tofollow through withit. These participants still showed the pro-
spective moral licensing effect, indicating that they say their agreement,
regardless of actual intentions, as the moral act. This possibility needs to
be examined further in future studies. It may be that, in people's minds,
morality encompasses a wide variety of concepts, including past, future,
and intended behavior as well as simply anticipated behavior.
The idea that agreeing to a moral request maybe be considered the
moral act itself raises another question. If a person plans to engage in
a good behavior of their own volition, rather than in response to a re-
quest, would that person still show the prospective moral licensing ef-
fect? If anticipating doing a moral behavior in the future is what
creates the prospective moral licensing effect, then this effect show
occur even for individuals who decided on their own they would do
the futuremoral behavior. However, if individuals feel licensed only be-
cause they see agreeing to future moral behavior as a moral act, thenit is
possible that the prospective moral licensing effect would not occur for
individual who planned to do a moral behavior out of personal initia-
tive. Further work would be needed to determine if individuals license
themselves for unrequested anticipated moral behavior.
In future work, it will be important to explore whether prospective
moral licensing would reduce the likelihood of actually performing
the anticipated moral act in the future. If someone has already gained
the benefits of feeling moral by anticipating the future moral act, they
may no longer feel it is necessary to do the moral work. However,
other research (e.g. Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer, 2001;
Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997; Webb & Sheeran, 2003) shows that
once a person commits to a plan, it actually becomes more likely that
he/she will follow through with the plan. Our participants did agree to
perform the moral behavior in the future, which could be seen as goal
commitment. It would be interesting to examine whether prospective
moral licensing decreases the likelihood of following through on the
moral act (e.g., because an important benefit of the moral act has al-
ready been realized) or if it increases people's commitment to their fu-
ture moral act. It may be that individual differences in personal
commitment to the future moral act would determine whether people
would be more or less likely to follow through with the moral act.
It is important to note that in our studies agreeing to the moral act
and assessing the immoral behavior occurred very close together in
time. Participants were asked about performing a charitable act in the
future, then immediately given the opportunity to express their racial
prejudice. It will be important in subsequent work to examine how
long the prospective moral licensing effect lasts. It may be that prospec-
tive moral licensing only happens when there is a short duration be-
tween anticipating the future behavior and the potentially licensed
behavior. However, it is also possible that the prospective moral licens-
ing may last a longer period of time. Because anticipating performing a
moral action appears to earn moral credits, these credits may be stored
115J. Cascio, E.A. Plant / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 56 (2015) 110–116
for some length of time. A more complete understanding on how long
prospective moral licensing occurs and when the credit gained can be
stored or used will improve our understanding of how people balance
and negotiate their moral and immoral behaviors.
It will also be valuable to examine whether these findings hold
when others are not aware that the individual anticipates perform
a moral act. In our studies, participants always let the experimenter
know that they would perform the anticipated moral act. Even when
the experimenter had no way to keep them accountable, another
person still knew about their charitable plans. If the person feels
morally licensed simply because they anticipate doing the moral be-
havior, then it shouldn't matter if someone else knows what they
plan to do. Previous work has shown that participants still felt mor-
ally licensed, even when others did not know of their prior moral
acts (Monin & Miller, 2001, Study 3). That study involved moral cre-
dentials, rather than moral credits but it is reasonable that the effect
here would work in a similar manner. However it is also possible
that, rather than gaining credit for their intentions, people may be
giving themselves credit for sharing these intentions with another
person. In this case, an audience would be required for the prospec-
tive moral licensing to occur. Returning to our opening example,
George may think to himself that he will donate to the food drive,
but it may not license his prejudiced hiring decision if his coworkers
arenotawareofhisplan.Futureresearchshouldexaminewhether
an audience is needed for the prospective moral licensing effect to
occur.
Conclusions
Moralityis an important part of a person's self-concept. This can lead
to situations where moral actions are used to license morally question-
able actions. The current work provides evidence that people can feel
morally licensed even for actions they anticipate doing in the future,
which we have termed prospective moral licensing. Anticipating doing
a moral action in the future licenses individuals to act in morally ques-
tionable ways in the present by permitting people to gain moral credit
for actions they anticipate doing. Thus, simply planning to do good
later can allow you to be bad now.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Alicia Amerson, Nick Bosy,
SamanthaDeZerga, Tasha Fiedler, Jacob Glickman, Jessica Greil, Danielle
Pociluyko, Olivia Renfro, Estefani Rohttis, Katie Salemi, & Lynette Wil-
liams for their valuable assistance in collecting the data reported in
this manuscript.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.09.009.
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