A prior good act can, under some conditions, license a later lapse rather than reinforcing the standard.
Monin and Miller's 2001 studies found that subjects who first expressed an anti-prejudice view were subsequently more willing to favour a white candidate. Direct replications of that result have failed, and the effect overall is small, heterogeneous and sensitive to context.
In practice
- A committee that has just approved a diversity policy makes a worse hiring decision the same afternoon.
- A person who cycled to work feels licensed to order the larger portion, and the arithmetic does not work.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is credentialling: an act that establishes one's good standing reduces the perceived need to demonstrate it again, so the next choice is made with the standard relaxed.
- In its favour
- The mechanism is intuitive and the original experiments were carefully designed, with effects that fit a wider pattern of self-regulation as a balance rather than a ratchet.
- Against it
- Direct replications of the original moral-credentials result have failed, publication bias in this literature is substantial, and meta-analytic estimates fall towards zero when small studies are accounted for.
- Standing
- Direct replications of the original moral-credentials result have failed, and publication bias in this literature is substantial. The meritocracy paradox is its institutional form.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind