Impact of Moral Self Licensing on Social Perceptions - Report Example

Impact of Moral Self Licensing on Social Perceptions. Name of student Unit Code Date Abstract This is a description of a study on social perception and how it is impacted by moral self licensing. It is a review of what the study entailed, the methodology used in the study, the results and the analysis of the findings of the study. The report aims establishing if social perception is influenced by moral self concept, racism sensitivity and prosocial behavior, aspects of moral self licensing. The method used in the study was qualitative involving the use of questionnaires and other measurement tools in coming up with data. The measurement tools used in the study showed insignificant difference between the control and the moral licensing condition. The report thus shows that moral licensing has insignificant impact on social perception. This therefore implies that people think of their own volition without the influence of moral licensing in making decisions about others. Introduction Social perception is a form of perception that allows people to understand others in their social world. It gives individuals the skill to identify how others influence their personal lives and to form an idea of others by giving information about people’s usual behavior across situations. This can be explained using the implicit personality theory which states that if a person observes specific characteristics in another person, they tend to assume that their personality traits are concurrent with the initial trait (Perugini and Leone, 2009, p. 748). This is a collection of beliefs and assumptions on how certain traits are linked to other characteristics and behavior. The assumptions enable people to quickly judge the character of an individual, and to categorize people so that their behavior can be predicted and additional information inferred about them. This can also contribute to stereotyping and errors. However, before one is able to make perceptions about others, they should be able to recognize the perceptions they have of themselves. Self concept is an organized and constant set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself (Kay, 1972, p.65). This is unique to everyone and is a reflection of all their personal attributes, beliefs and attitudes which define someone’s moral identity. Moral identity is a regulatory mechanism that motivates moral action and is one of the aspects of a highly dynamic self concept (Aquino and Reed, 2002, p.1431). Moral development theorists define moral action as social responsiveness to the needs of others. This therefore implies that people with a high moral identity have a stronger sense of having freely chosen to engage in particular activities from which they garner intrinsic satisfaction because the activities are consistent with their self conceptions. Moral self-importance defines how much an individual wants to be honorable where one can place great emphasis on being moral without feeling moral or having the community recognize them as moral leaders worth emulating (Narvaez et. al, 2006, p.908). Social identity theory defines individuals as holding concepts of the self at both individual and at societal level. Personal identity thus defines the aspects of the self that relate to a group or in terms of the group aspects to which one belongs. Making group boundaries salient categorizes individuals as members of their own group or as of another group comparing their group to others based on laid down criteria (Monin and Miller, 2001, p.35). Individuals are thus motivated to achieve a positive social identity by favoring their own racial group over others. Biological concepts of ‘race’ have dubious validity however; societal constructs of concept of ‘race’ are supported and utilized in ways that vary to help the present inequitable associations among groups. According to Merrit, Effron and Monin, establishing one’s lack of prejudice, even with a token of gesture like choosing the best qualified candidate who may belong to a minority group, gives a leeway for individuals to express otherwise uncertain preferences like those that favour whites over minorities (2010, p.346). To secure a moral identity and to regulate behavior in the domain of racial prejudice, people use bad deeds that one could have done but did not. This shows that people feel more secure in their moral identities not only when they contemplate a virtuous path chosen but also when they consider the immoral roads they have chosen not to take (Effron, Miller and Monin, 2012). Counterfactual transgressions make people feel secure in their morality allowing them to act in ways that seemed prejudiced. This is so because imagining a counterfactual transgression creates the appearance that one resisted strong temptations or situational pressures that would have led to them to transgress thus implying that one has an upright character. The motivation to achieve a moral identity makes people come up with immoral alternatives to their past behavior such that the distorted past makes the road not taken may seem immoral. In addition, counterfactual transgression secures moral identity by providing a yardstick against which one’s behavior may be contrasted. This value provides a deleterious, source of dynamicity in people’s moral lives. In combination with the paths chosen, it helps to define their identities. The paths not chosen influence the way people evaluate their moral character and help determine whether they allow themselves to act on morally questionable impulses. In relation with racism, which defines someone who makes outright acts of racial discrimination, it is easier to feel that not committing such acts proves that one is not a racist. In relation to moral licensing, counterfactual transgressions may allow people to blow morality out of proportion. This is because it seems to suggest that doing good deeds is unnecessary for people to feel licensed to deviate from what is morally accepted (Effron, Miller and Monin, 2012). It shows that people are willing to license themselves on the basis of morally unremarkable behavior like denouncing sexist statements, supporting a black man’s candidature and helping out in a certain situation. To add on to that, counterfactual transgression acts as a moral compensation in that people act virtuously to atone for prior misdeeds. They may be invented to counter for past actions, present situations or future acts. Social self perception is related to the ways in which people spend their time and to later involve in prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior is performed to benefit others and it is threatened by actions that may alter one’s sense of belonging (Twenge et. al, 2007, p.56). Activity choice perspectives and the developmental theories about self and motivation are grounded in the notion that social perceptions are related to how people spend their time and who they choose as friends. The more time one spends with others the more they are likely to be sociable and have prosocial behavior. This study aims at determining if moral self concept, racial sensitivity and prosocial behavior, aspects of moral self licensing, have any relations with social perceptions. This is especially in relation with how people judge and perceive others who may lack traits they may have. Discussion The study involved giving the participants a vignette to go through which gives a case scenario of a thief and a brief description. They are than to take tasks to try and come up with the guilty person by choosing the characteristics that befit the guilty one. These tasks are aspects of moral licensing that help the researcher in determining if the social perceptions of the participants about the thief are influenced by moral self licensing. Moral self licensing has been assessed here through four tasks. These include moral self concept which has both the explicit and the implicit types, racism sensitivity and prosocial behavior. Explicit moral self concept is a tool that entailed giving the participants characteristics to describe a person from which they would visualize the kind of person with those characteristics and agree or disagree with them. This tool has two subscales; internalization and symbolization. The results of this task on both subscale show that the participants showed equal characteristic comparison of the guilty and the non-guilty party. This therefore implies that the absence or presence of explicit moral self concept, an aspect of moral self licensing does not impact social perception. The characteristics provided for the test will fit the person for which they are required with or without the aspect of moral self licensing put in place. This is because it is the only logical thing to do and thus morality has no play in it. On the other hand, implicit moral self concept is a tool that measures the level to which individuals associated their self concept with morality. A higher score in this test implies a stronger implicit moral self concept. The control condition had a higher IAT score than the license conditioned group indicating that implicit moral self concept as an aspect of moral self licensing has no relation with social perception. Individuals who are morally self licensed tend to chose characteristics that fit a certain moral scale and with carefully scan through the options before selecting what they think is associated with their self concept and morality and probably had none of the provided characteristics matching up to their moral standards. This may then explain the reason why the control group completed the task with a higher score in the implicit moral self concept. Racism sensitivity is another aspect that was tested in the study. This was done by measuring the extent to which ambiguous behaviors were racist or not and these were rated on a scale with higher scores indicating greater racism sensitivity. The results of the study showed no significant difference between the control and the licensed group therefore implying that the absence or presence of racism sensitivity as an aspect of moral self licensing had no impact on social perception. The license conditioned group probably responded in a manner that showed their lack of racism while the control conditioned group probably responded with the thought that giving a racial stereotype would be in bad light. This would be explained by the scenario explained by Merrit, Effron and Monin when the new chief of police gives a safe answer when his opinion is sought over who, between a white and a black man, best suits the police job (2010, p. 345). Prosocial behavior was assessed by the use of a volunteering sign up task. The results of this test show that participants in the licensed condition were more likely to volunteer than participants in the control condition. This is supported by the literature that outlines counterfactual transgressions as a way of making up for prior, present or future mistakes. Individuals who are moral self licensed tend to try and find ways to make up for their immoralities. In addition, moral self licensing advocates for ways of trying to interact well with others and being an element of something as prosocial behavior would dictate. This would explain why the control group responded poorly to the volunteering as it would not be of any value to them. The study results show that aspects of moral self licensing have an impact on social perception. The aspects work in tandem and assessing each individually and their impact on social perception yield varied results. Of the four aspects tested, prosocial behavior showed the strongest relation with social perception. This may be attributed to the fact that moral licensing advocates for increased interactions among people and as such a pro social person. In summary, moral self licensing has generally little impact on social perception. The study has positive feedback and received good response from participants from both control and licensed parts. It was conducted within a proper time frame ensuring proper and accurate collection of information from those who took part. It was also comprehensive and involved a lot of data thus ensuring all the dimensions of the study were taken care of. The study however did not take care of the possibility of bias from the huge amount of data collected. This makes the validity and reliability of the information collected questionable. Besides, some of the tests taken are tedious. Having to take the implicit moral self concept test requires patience and time; it also has a lot of questions which may confuse the participant. The implicit test can be made easier by having it taken in stages or by reducing the number of questions in it while still maintaining its reliability and validity. With regards to the findings of the study, it is imperative that the data amount is taken into consideration to limit bias and that further evaluation is done to establish if indeed social perception is influenced by moral self licensing. References Aquino, K., & Reed, A. II. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1423–1440. Effron, D. A, Miller, D. T., & Monin, B. (2012). Inventing racist roads not taken: the licensing effect of immoral counterfactual behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 916-932. doi:10.1037/a0030008 Kay, W. (1972). The Self-concept As A Moral Control. Journal of Moral Education, 2(1), 63-67. Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., & Monin, B. (2010). Moral self-licensing: when being good frees us to be bad. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 344–357. doi:10.1111/j.1751- 9004.2010.00263.x Monin, B., and Miller, D. T., (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice, Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 81(1), 33–43. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.8I.I.33 Narvaez, D., Lapsley, D. K., Hagele, S., and Lasky, B. (2006). Moral chronicity and social information processing: Tests of a social cognitive approach to the moral personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(6), 966-985. Retrieved from http://psych.stanford.edu/~monin/papers/Monin%20and%20Jordan%20Moral%20Identity%20Chapter.pdf Perugini, M., and Leone, L. (2009). Implicit self-concept and moral action. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(5), 747-754. Twenge, J. M., Ciarocco, N.J., Baumeister, R.F., DeWall, N.C. and Bartels, M. J. (2007). Social Exclusion Decreases Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 56-66, doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.56 Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the moral self-concept IAT Control condition Moral licensing condition (N=50) (N=53) Mean .69 .53 SD .32 .39 Read More

Moral identity is a regulatory mechanism that motivates moral action and is one of the aspects of a highly dynamic self concept (Aquino and Reed, 2002, p.1431). Moral development theorists define moral action as social responsiveness to the needs of others. This therefore implies that people with a high moral identity have a stronger sense of having freely chosen to engage in particular activities from which they garner intrinsic satisfaction because the activities are consistent with their self conceptions.

Moral self-importance defines how much an individual wants to be honorable where one can place great emphasis on being moral without feeling moral or having the community recognize them as moral leaders worth emulating (Narvaez et. al, 2006, p.908). Social identity theory defines individuals as holding concepts of the self at both individual and at societal level. Personal identity thus defines the aspects of the self that relate to a group or in terms of the group aspects to which one belongs.

Making group boundaries salient categorizes individuals as members of their own group or as of another group comparing their group to others based on laid down criteria (Monin and Miller, 2001, p.35). Individuals are thus motivated to achieve a positive social identity by favoring their own racial group over others. Biological concepts of ‘race’ have dubious validity however; societal constructs of concept of ‘race’ are supported and utilized in ways that vary to help the present inequitable associations among groups.

According to Merrit, Effron and Monin, establishing one’s lack of prejudice, even with a token of gesture like choosing the best qualified candidate who may belong to a minority group, gives a leeway for individuals to express otherwise uncertain preferences like those that favour whites over minorities (2010, p.346). To secure a moral identity and to regulate behavior in the domain of racial prejudice, people use bad deeds that one could have done but did not. This shows that people feel more secure in their moral identities not only when they contemplate a virtuous path chosen but also when they consider the immoral roads they have chosen not to take (Effron, Miller and Monin, 2012).

Counterfactual transgressions make people feel secure in their morality allowing them to act in ways that seemed prejudiced. This is so because imagining a counterfactual transgression creates the appearance that one resisted strong temptations or situational pressures that would have led to them to transgress thus implying that one has an upright character. The motivation to achieve a moral identity makes people come up with immoral alternatives to their past behavior such that the distorted past makes the road not taken may seem immoral.

In addition, counterfactual transgression secures moral identity by providing a yardstick against which one’s behavior may be contrasted. This value provides a deleterious, source of dynamicity in people’s moral lives. In combination with the paths chosen, it helps to define their identities. The paths not chosen influence the way people evaluate their moral character and help determine whether they allow themselves to act on morally questionable impulses. In relation with racism, which defines someone who makes outright acts of racial discrimination, it is easier to feel that not committing such acts proves that one is not a racist.

In relation to moral licensing, counterfactual transgressions may allow people to blow morality out of proportion. This is because it seems to suggest that doing good deeds is unnecessary for people to feel licensed to deviate from what is morally accepted (Effron, Miller and Monin, 2012). It shows that people are willing to license themselves on the basis of morally unremarkable behavior like denouncing sexist statements, supporting a black man’s candidature and helping out in a certain situation.

To add on to that, counterfactual transgression acts as a moral compensation in that people act virtuously to atone for prior misdeeds.

Read More