Moral licensing posits that previous moral acts increase the probability of behaving immorally in the future. According to this perspective, rejecting bribes, even because they are too small, would create a kind of "license" for taking (presumably larger) bribes in the future. On the other hand, the desire for consistency in behavior predicts that previous rejection of bribes will increase the probability of rejection for bribes offered in the future. Using a laboratory task modeling the decision to take a bribe, we examined how resisting and succumbing to the temptation to take a bribe affects later bribe-taking. Participants (N = 297) were offered either low bribes first and high bribes later or vice versa. Low bribes were in general rejected more often and the results showed some weak, nonsignificant evidence that bribe-taking may be influenced by the order of the sizes of offered bribes. However, there was no evidence of an increased probability of taking bribes after being offered the low bribes first and thus no evidence in support of the moral licensing effect.

Faculty of Business Administration Prague University of Economics and Business náměstí Winstona Churchilla 4 Prague 130 67 Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Abbink, K. & Serra, D. Anticorruption policies: Lessons from the lab. in New Advances in Experimental Research on Corruption. Research in Experimental Economics (eds. Serra, D. & Wantchekon, L.) 77–115 (Emerald Group Publishing, 2012).

Becker GS. Crime and punishment: An economic approach. J. Polit. Econ. 1968;76:169–217. doi: 10.1086/259394. DOI

Draca M, Machin S. Crime and economic incentives. Ann. Rev. Econ. 2015;7:389–408. doi: 10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115808. DOI

Gerlach P, Teodorescu K, Hertwig R. The truth about lies: A meta-analysis on dishonest behavior. Psychol. Bull. 2019;145:1–44. doi: 10.1037/bul0000174. PubMed DOI

Hilbig BE, Hessler CM. What lies beneath: How the distance between truth and lie drives dishonesty. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 2013;49:263–266. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.11.010. DOI

Mazar N, Amir O, Ariely D. The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. J. Mark. Res. 2008;45:633–644. doi: 10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633. DOI

Thielmann I, Hilbig BE. No gain without pain: The psychological costs of dishonesty. J. Econ. Psychol. 2019;71:126–137. doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2018.06.001. DOI

Köbis NC, Verschuere B, Bereby-Meyer Y, Rand D, Shalvi S. Intuitive honesty versus dishonesty: Meta-analytic evidence. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2019;14:778–796. doi: 10.1177/1745691619851778. PubMed DOI

Ayal S, Gino F, Barkan R, Ariely D. Three principles to REVISE people’s unethical behavior. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2015;10:738–741. doi: 10.1177/1745691615598512. PubMed DOI

Schild C, Heck DW, Ścigała KA, Zettler I. Revisiting REVISE:(Re) Testing unique and combined effects of REminding, VIsibility, and SElf-engagement manipulations on cheating behavior. J. Econ. Psychol. 2019;75:102161. doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2019.04.001. DOI

Moore C. Moral disengagement. Curr. Opin. Psychol. 2015;6:199–204. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.018. DOI

Shalvi S, Gino F, Barkan R, Ayal S. Self-serving justifications doing wrong and feeling moral. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2015;24:125–130. doi: 10.1177/0963721414553264. DOI

Shalvi S, Eldar O, Bereby-Meyer Y. Honesty requires time (and lack of justifications. Psychol. Sci. 2012;23:1264–1270. doi: 10.1177/0956797612443835. PubMed DOI

Kline, R., Galeotti, F. & Orsini, R. When Foul Play Seems Fair: Dishonesty as a Response to Violations of Just Deserts. Quad. - Work. Pap. DSE N°920, (2014).

Pittarello A, Leib M, Gordon-Hecker T, Shalvi S. Justifications shape ethical blind spots. Psychol. Sci. 2015;26:794–804. doi: 10.1177/0956797615571018. PubMed DOI

Shalvi S, Dana J, Handgraaf MJ, De Dreu CK. Justified ethicality: Observing desired counterfactuals modifies ethical perceptions and behavior. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 2011;115:181–190. doi: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.02.001. DOI

Shalvi S, Handgraaf MJ, De Dreu CK. Ethical manoeuvring: Why people avoid both major and minor lies. Br. J. Manag. 2011;22:16–27. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2010.00709.x. DOI

Dana, J., Loewenstein, G. & Weber, R. Ethical immunity: How people violate their own moral standards without feeling they are doing so. in Behavioral Business Ethics: Shaping an Emerging Field (eds. Cremer, D. D. & Tenbrunsel, A. T.) 201–219 (Routledge, 2012).

Gross J, Leib M, Offerman T, Shalvi S. Ethical free riding: When honest people find dishonest partners. Psychol. Sci. 2018;29:1956–1968. doi: 10.1177/0956797618796480. PubMed DOI PMC

Merritt AC, Effron DA, Monin B. Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad. Soc. Personal. Psychol. Compass. 2010;4:344–357. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00263.x. DOI

Sachdeva S, Iliev R, Medin DL. Sinning saints and saintly sinners: The paradox of moral self-regulation. Psychol. Sci. 2009;20:523–528. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02326.x. PubMed DOI

Khan U, Dhar R. Licensing effect in consumer choice. J. Mark. Res. 2006;43:259–266. doi: 10.1509/jmkr.43.2.259. DOI

Tanner RJ, Carlson KA. Unrealistically optimistic consumers: A selective hypothesis testing account for optimism in predictions of future behavior. J. Consum. Res. 2009;35:810–822. doi: 10.1086/593690. DOI

Blanken I, Ven N, Zeelenberg M, Meijers MH. Three attempts to replicate the moral licensing effect. Soc. Psychol. 2014;45:232–238. doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000189. DOI

Vranka MA, Bahník Š. Predictors of bribe-taking: The role of bribe size and personality. Front. Psychol. 2018;9:1511. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01511. PubMed DOI PMC

Bahník Š, Vranka MA. Experimental test of the effects of punishment probability and size on the decision to take a bribe. J. Behav. Exp. Econ. 2022;97:101813. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101813. DOI

Bahník, Š. & Vranka, M. A. Probabilistic harm does not increase selfish behavior in a bribe-taking laboratory task. (2022). Available at: https://psyarxiv.com/t6bm8

Bahník, Š. & Vranka, M. A. Reward perception, but not reward inequality is associated with increased bribe-taking in a laboratory task. (2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4040000

Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. (2014). Available at arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5823.

Kuznetsova A, Brockhoff PB, Christensen RH. lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. J. Stat. Softw. 2017;82:1–26. doi: 10.18637/jss.v082.i13. DOI

Barr DJ. Random effects structure for testing interactions in linear mixed-effects models. Front. Psychol. 2013;4:328. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00328. PubMed DOI PMC

Bates, D., Kliegl, R., Vasishth, S., & Baayen, H. Parsimonious mixed models. (2015). Available at arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.04967.

Gomila R. Logistic or linear? Estimating causal effects of experimental treatments on binary outcomes using regression analysis. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 2021;150:700–709. doi: 10.1037/xge0000920. PubMed DOI

Mullen E, Monin B. Consistency versus licensing effects of past moral behavior. An. Rev. Psychol. 2016;67:363–385. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115120. PubMed DOI

Kristofferson K, White K, Peloza J. The nature of slacktivism: How the social observability of an initial act of token support affects subsequent prosocial action. J. Consum. Res. 2014;40:1149–1166. doi: 10.1086/674137. DOI

Greene M, Low K. Public integrity, private hypocrisy, and the moral licensing effect. Soc. Behav. Personal. 2014;42:391–400. doi: 10.2224/sbp.2014.42.3.391. DOI

Rotella A, Barclay P. Failure to replicate moral licensing and moral cleansing in an online experiment. Personal. Individ. Differ. 2020;161:109967. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.109967. DOI

Urban J, Bahník Š, Braun Kohlová M. Green consumption does not make people cheat: Three attempts to replicate moral licensing effect due to pro-environmental behavior. J. Environ. Psychol. 2019;63:139–147. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.01.011. DOI

Urban J, Braun Kohlová M, Bahník Š. No evidence of within-domain moral licensing in the environmental domain. Environ. Behav. 2021;53:1070–1094. doi: 10.1177/0013916520942604. DOI

Blanken I, Ven N, Zeelenberg M. A meta-analytic review of moral licensing. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 2015;41:540–558. doi: 10.1177/0146167215572134. PubMed DOI

Simbrunner P, Schlegelmilch BB. Moral licensing: A culture-moderated meta-analysis. Manag. Rev. Q. 2017;67:201–225. doi: 10.1007/s11301-017-0128-0. DOI

Kuper N, Bott A. Has the evidence for moral licensing been inflated by publication bias? Meta-Psychol. 2019 doi: 10.15626/MP.2018.878. DOI