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Published in final edited form as:
Ethics Behav. 2011 January ; 21(1): 1–12. doi:10.1080/10508422.2011.537566.

Moral Credentialing and the Rationalization of Misconduct
Ryan P. Brown, Michael Tamborski, Xiaoqian Wang, Collin D. Barnes, Michael D. Mumford,
Shane Connelly, and Lynn D. Devenport
Department of Psychology, The University of Oklahoma

Abstract

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Recent studies lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the act of affirming one’s egalitarian or prosocial values and virtues might subsequently facilitate prejudiced or self-serving behavior, aneffect previously referred to as “moral credentialing.” The present study extends this paradox tothe domain of academic misconduct and investigates the hypothesis that such an effect might belimited by the extent to which misbehavior is rationalizable. Using a paradigm designed toinvestigate deliberative and rationalized forms of cheating (von Hippel, Lakin, & Shakarchi,2005), we found that when participants had credentialed themselves (versus a non-closeacquaintance) via a set of hypothetical moral dilemmas, they were more likely to cheat on asubsequent math task, but only if cheating was highly rationalizable. When cheating was difficult
to rationalize, moral credentialing had almost no impact on cheating.

Keywords
rationalization; misconduct; cheating; moral credentialing

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Motivational speakers, not unlike social psychologists, are often fond of noting thatperception can create reality. If we see ourselves as successful people, so the reasoning goes,
we are more likely to be successful. If we can envision ourselves scoring a goal, playing thetuba, or reciting our lines, that vision might translate into actual behavior. Might the same betrue of moral behavior that appears to be true of other kinds of behavior? Research on moral
credentialing actually suggests the opposite can sometimes be true. Moral credentialingrefers to the act of establishing oneself as a virtuous or moral person, and recent research has
shown that it can actually facilitate selfish or ethically questionable behavior, whether theact of credentialing occurs in public or in private and whether it involves real or merely
imagined behavior (e.g., Khan & Dhar, 2006; Monin & Miller, 2001).
Monin & Miller (2001) first demonstrated the effect of moral credentialing in a series ofstudies examining the expression of prejudice in hiring decisions. They found that men who
had been given the opportunity to establish their egalitarian bona fides by disagreeing withblatantly sexist statements (compared to men who had no such opportunity) were
subsequently more likely to rate a male candidate as being better suited than a female for astereotypically masculine job. Likewise, White participants were more likely to favor a
White male (over an African American or a female) for a job after first being given theopportunity to hire a highly-qualified female or African American for a hypotheticalconsulting firm. In related studies on the “licensing effect,” Khan and Dhar (2006)
demonstrated that participants who imagined volunteering or donating to charity were more

Address correspondence to the first author at Department of Psychology, The University of Oklahoma, 455 W. Lindsey, DHT 705,
Norman, OK 73019 (rpbrown@ou.edu).

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likely to make a self-indulgent purchase of a luxury item than were participants who had notbeen able to affirm their moral integrity.

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These studies demonstrate that moral credentialing can free people to behave according totheir “darker” impulses, loosening the bonds of self-restraint imposed by a socially tuned
conscience. However, this paradoxical effect of moral credentialing appears to be at odds
with theories of self-consistency. People have a strong motivation for consistency (Steele,
1988; Swann, Griffin, Predmore, & Gaines, 1987; Swann, Stein-Seroussi, & Giesler, 1992),
and violations of the consistency motive are often aversive (Higgins, 1987). From a selfconsistency perspective, establishing one’s moral credentials should inhibit, rather thanexacerbate, immoral behavior. By asserting one’s virtues, the credentialer makes salient hisor her moral standards, making these standards more accessible guides for subsequent
behavior (Fazio, Powell, & Williams, 1989; Fazio & Williams, 1986) and risking the stigma
of exposed hypocrisy should he or she violate these standards. Given the consistency-based
motive to reduce immoral behavior following the proclamation of one’s moral integrity, why
would moral credentialing ever facilitate misconduct?

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We believe the answer to this question lies in the mental maneuverings of rationalization.
Rationalization can enable immoral behavior to be reinterpreted as moral (or at least as
neutral) and can allow people to erect a psychological barrier between their misbehavior andthe self-concept, enabling them to see themselves as “decent human beings” while they
engage in immoral or unethical behavior. Thus, rationalization can free people to misbehave
without being plagued by the dissonance and guilt that would otherwise stem from theircontradicting their moral values (Bandura, 1999; Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, &Pastorelli, 1996; Bersoff, 1999a; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004; Tsang, 2002).

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The role of rationalization in misconduct has been reliably demonstrated in previous studies.
For example, using a sample of elementary and junior high school students, Bandura et al.
(1996) found a consistently positive relationship between multiple reports of delinquent
behavior and a combination of various rationalization techniques (e.g., dehumanization,
displacement of responsibility, and justification). Likewise, Batson and colleagues (Batson,
Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, 1997; Batson, Thompson, Seuferling,
Whitney, & Strongman, 1999) found evidence of moral rationalization in a series of moral
dilemma studies. Participants who flipped a coin to assign tasks to themselves and a stranger
tended to ignore the outcome of the coin toss and assign the positive task to themselves, yetthey maintained that their decision was more moral than did those who did not flip a coin. In
this way, participants were able to experience the benefits of appearing virtuous without
having to bear the costs of actually being so. Similarly, Norton, Vandello, and Darley (2004)
found that participants tended to favor the more educated applicant for a stereotypicallymale job when either no gender information was provided or when the more educatedcandidate was a male. When the more educated applicant was a female, experience rather
than education suddenly became the most important characteristic for applicants. This
research highlights people’s agility in shifting their decision-making criteria to suit theirpreferred conclusions while also protecting the self-concept from any undesirable
repercussions.
Ambiguity seems central to the process of rationalization. If a behavior is unambiguously
immoral, rationalization will tend to be difficult. Although previous research on
credentialing (e.g., Monin & Miller, 2001) suggests that moral credentialing operates bytaking advantage of the ambiguity of certain behaviors, this possibility has yet to beestablished empirically. The study we report here investigates whether the degree to which
behavior is rationalizable might determine when moral credentialing will facilitate
misconduct. We hypothesized that moral credentialing would result in more misconduct

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when that misconduct is highly rationalizable. In contrast, moral credentialing should notenhance misconduct when that misconduct is unambiguously immoral, in which case it
would be difficult to rationalize. Indeed, in such instances, self-consistency motives mightundermine the effects of self-credentialing and could even lead to a reduction in misconduct
following moral credentialing. Direct assessments of rationalization processes are difficult to
make, especially while they are occurring. Because of this difficulty, rather than testing themediating role of rationalization in the effects of moral credentialing, we investigated ourhypothesis by manipulating the rationalizability of misbehavior and examining whether
credentialing the self (versus an acquaintance) resulted in increased or decreased levels ofcheating in a competitive situation.

MethodParticipants
Two hundred thirty-six undergraduates (171 female, 65 male) participated in partial
fulfillment of a course requirement. Data from 45 participants were excluded from theanalyses due to high suspicion levels (16 participants revealed that they believed we wereassessing cheating behaviors), procedural problems (n = 8), or failure to follow instructions(n = 21), the latter of which we describe in more detail in the Results.

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Materials and Procedure
After being escorted to a private cubicle, participants were informed that the purpose of thestudy was to explore individual differences in abstract and concrete reasoning ability. Then
participants were randomly assigned to complete the moral credentialing task either forthemselves or for a non-close acquaintance. The moral credentialing task required
participants to read 4 moral dilemmas and to rate how likely they (or an acquaintance)
would be to behave in a pro-social fashion if they were to encounter such a situation. For
example, in one scenario participants read that they (or their acquaintance) had just inheriteda large sum of money from a dead relative, and soon after receiving their inheritance they
were approached by a representative from a charitable organization asking for a sizeable
donation. Participants were asked to rate how likely they (or their acquaintance) would be to
make this donation to the charity out of their inheritance. The 4 scenarios were adapted froma larger set of such items developed by Barnes and Brown (2007) and were selected basedon pilot data indicating that people tend to believe they would be especially likely to behave
pro-socially if they were ever faced with these dilemmas, unlikely though the scenarios
were. Thus, participants credentialed either themselves or an acquaintance through thesehypothetical dilemmas.

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Prior to completing this task, participants in the acquaintance condition were prompted towrite down the initials of an acquaintance whom they did not consider to be a close friend
and to rate how close they were to this acquaintance using a 7-point Likert scale ranging
from 1 “not close” to 7 “very close.” Participants in the acquaintance condition were
instructed to use this individual to respond to the 4 moral dilemmas on the moral
credentialing task. A non-close acquaintance was selected as the target for the non-selfcredentialing condition because pilot research revealed that people draw upon their own
personal values when predicting the behaviors of close friends but do not do so when
predicting the behavior of mere acquaintances. This evidence suggested that the social
expansiveness of the self-concept (e.g., Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992) might cause
participants to feel personally credentialed if they were to predict the hypothetical behaviors
of a close friend, similar to the phenomenon known as “basking in reflected glory” (e.g.,
Cialdini et al., 1976). Following the moral credentialing task, participants completed an
open-ended self-description task, which instructed them to describe their general

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characteristics. Responses from these self-descriptions were rated for general positivity,
followed by eight subcategories (i.e., personality, morality, abilities, social desirability, work
ethic, religiosity, relationships, and general demographics) by two trained graduate students(more details about these ratings appear in the Results). If moral credentialing boosts
people’s sense of their personal integrity, then the effect of credentialing might be expected
to be exhibited in their immediate self-descriptions (e.g., Markus & Kunda, 1986), at least
with respect to morality. Thus, the positivity of participants’ self-descriptions served as amanipulation check on the effectiveness of the moral credentialing task.

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Finally, participants completed the Mental Math Task (MMT; for a detailed description, see
von Hippel, Lakin, & Sakarchi, 2005), which served as our operationalization of
misconduct. On the MMT, participants had to solve two sets of 10 mathematical equations
on a computer by adding or subtracting 10 numbers (between 1 and 20). Participants were
informed that the MMT was originally developed for another project and the current version
was modified for the present study but was still in the piloting phase. Once the task began,they would need to press the spacebar to bring up a response box after the question came on
the screen (due, ostensibly, to a programming “bug” that the experimenter had been
unsuccessful in eliminating without crashing the program altogether). If they did not do so,
the answer would appear. They were told that they would have all the time that they needed
to solve each equation once the response box was on the screen. Depending on thecondition, participants had either 10 sec to press the spacebar for the first set of questions
and 1 sec for the second set, or vice versa. Based on prior research, 1 sec is enough time topress the spacebar in the context of solving these math problems when participants are
rewarded for doing so (see von Hippel et al., 2005). Thus, there is no question about
participants’ ability to press the spacebar in time to keep the answers from appearing, but thenature of the task does allow them to rationalize their failure to do so as incidental rather
than as immoral. Indeed, as von Hippel et al. (2005) have shown, performance in this 1 sec
condition is predictive of subsequent self-serving rationalizations and judgments,
independent of social desirability motives.

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The total number of times a participant failed to press the spacebar served as our dependentmeasure. Because failing to hit the spacebar within the larger, 10-sec time lag was only
attributable to a deliberate desire to cheat, we construed such behavior as low inrationalizability. In contrast, failing to hit the spacebar within the 1-sec time lag could be
more easily rationalized by participants as a momentary lapse of attention or simply as a
product of the greater difficulty of this task; thus, we construed this behavior as high inrationalizability. Participants were left alone and were allowed all the time that they needed
to complete the MMT. After completing the MMT, participants completed a brief
questionnaire, which included their assessment of their performance on the MMT and theirrecall of the total number of times they failed to press the spacebar during the task. Finally,
participants were interviewed to assess their suspicion levels and debriefed.

Results
Manipulation Checks
Participants in the acquaintance condition were instructed to choose someone they knew butwith whom they did not have a close relationship. Midway through the experiment, wediscovered that 21 participants in this condition had chosen someone at or above the
midpoint of the relationship closeness scale. A slight adjustment to the procedure allowed
the experimenter to note reported closeness levels in the acquaintance condition and to ask
participants to choose another acquaintance if they had reported closeness levels at or above
the midpoint of the closeness scale. Data from the 21 participants who had failed to follow
instructions regarding their relationship with the acquaintance they selected were excluded
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Page 5from subsequent analyses, for, as noted previously, credentialing a close friend could
indirectly lead to a sense of self-credentialing.

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To determine whether responding to the hypothetical scenarios for the self (versus anacquaintance) had any effects on participants’ working self-concepts (Markus & Kunda,
1986), two judges (blind to condition) rated participants’ open-ended self-descriptions(intra-class correlation = .90) using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from −3 (“very negative”)
to +3 (“very positive”), with the 0 point representing either neutral content related to the
sub-dimension or simply no content on that dimension. We analyzed these ratings with aseries of independent samples t-tests and found that participants who credentialed
themselves received higher scores in the general positivity of their self-descriptions (M =1.83), t(189) = 1.69, p < .10, d = 0.24, as well as receiving higher (more positive) scores on
the sub-dimensions of personality (M = 0.99), t(189) = 2.28, p < .05, d = 0.34, and morality(M = 0.78), t(189) = 2.12, p < .05, d = 0.31, relative to participants who credentialed an
acquaintance (Ms = 1.58, 0.55, and 0.45, respectively). In contrast, and supporting thespecificity of the moral credentialing task, credentialed and non-credentialed participants did
not significantly differ in their self-descriptions on the sub-dimensions of ability, social
desirability, work ethic, religiosity, relationships, or demographics (all ts < 1.0). Thus, theact of credentialing the self (versus an acquaintance) on our hypothetical scenarios appeared
to influence the positivity of participants’ working self-concepts, but in a narrowly definedway.
Cheating

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Recall that participants completed both the 10-sec set of math problems and the 1-sec set,
which were counterbalanced across participants. However, due to the presence of significant
carryover effects across problem sets (which were especially strong when the first set ofproblems was the 10-sec set), we focused our analyses on just the cheating levels obtainedon the first set of math problems that participants completed, so that the design wascompletely between-groups. Results from the 2 (moral credentialing: self vs. acquaintance)× 2 (rationalizability: high or low) ANOVA indicated a main effect of rationalizability, F(1,187) = 21.28, p < .001, d = 0.71, such that participants in the high rationalizability condition(M = 4.27, SD = 3.38) cheated significantly more than those in the low rationalizability
condition (M = 2.09, SD = 2.77). The main effect of moral credentialing was not significant,F(1, 187) = 1.14, p > .05. As predicted, however, the ANOVA also revealed a credentialing
× rationalizability interaction, F(1, 187) = 3.80, p = .05, MSE = 9.44. The pattern of means
across conditions is shown in Figure 1. As these means show, moral credentialing of theself, relative to an acquaintance, led to significantly more cheating in the highrationalizability problem set, t(187) = 2.14, p = .034, d = 0.44, just as we hypothesized.. Incontrast, credentialing the self led to slightly less cheating in the low-rationalizability
problem set, although a planned comparison revealed that this reduction was not statisticallysignificant, t(187) < 1, p > .05. Thus, rationalizability moderated the effects of moral
credentialing on misconduct.
Self-Serving Bias in Recall of Misbehavior
Degree of bias in recall of misbehavior was calculated by subtracting the total number oftimes participants recalled failing to press the spacebar during the math task from the actual
number of such failures. Higher scores, thus, indicated more self-serving recall errors (orfailure to recall one’s failures). Credentialing the self, relative to an acquaintance, led tomore recall bias, F(1, 187) = 3.74, p = .05, d = 0.31. Participants also exhibited more bias inrecall of failures to press the spacebar in the high-rationalizability problem set than in the
low-rationalizability set, F(1, 187) = 12.72, p < .001, d = 0.57. However, these main effects
were qualified by a significant credentialing × rationalizability interaction, F(1, 187) = 5.56,

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p < .05, MSE = 3.76, such that participants who credentialed the self under-recalled theirfailures to hit the spacebar in the high-rationalizability problem set more than anyone else,as shown in Figure 2, consistent with our interpretation of their higher levels of cheating as
being driven by covert rationalization.

Discussion

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Research on moral credentialing has demonstrated that by endorsing egalitarian standards(Monin & Miller, 2001) or thinking about behaving in pro-social ways (Khan & Dhar,
2006), people can add to their moral stockholdings and thereby gain license to express their
non-egalitarian preferences or to behave selfishly. The present study tested the hypothesisthat such credentialing effects are bounded by the extent to which such behaviors can beeasily rationalized, noting that when rationalization is difficult, credentialing might not leadto misconduct because of consistency motives (Steele, 1988; Swann et al., 1987; Swann etal., 1992). The results of our study support this hypothesis. Morally credentialed individuals
cheated the most, but only when behavior was highly rationalizable – although, rather
conveniently, they seemed unable to recall having done so. In contrast, whenrationalizability was low, morally credentialed participants did not cheat more than noncredentialed participants. If anything, they actually cheated slightly less than noncredentialed participants, although this difference was non-significant and should beinterpreted with caution. Thus, asserting one’s moral fiber in a set of hypothetical moral
dilemmas was, if anything, morally inspiring when participants were subsequently facedwith an opportunity to cheat overtly and deliberately. However, this same moral
proclamation led to greater immorality when participants were subsequently faced with amore easily rationalizable opportunity to misbehave. These results extend previous
credentialing research to the realm of cheating and add an important caveat to previous
studies examining how the acquisition of moral “brownie points” can facilitate less-thanideal conduct – specifically, that moral credentialing effects are most pronounced whenmisbehaviors can easily be rationalized.

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To what extent are such moral credentialing effects a function of self-deception, and to what
extent are they a matter of social impression management? Monin and Miller (2001; Study3) addressed this question by manipulating whether the experimenter with whom
participants credentialed themselves was the same as (same-audience condition) or different
from (different-audience condition) the experimenter with whom they subsequently
expressed their implicit prejudices. They reasoned that if moral credentialing were primarily
a function of impression management concerns, then credentialing in the different-audience
condition would not license participants to express their racist preferences to the same extent
as credentialing in the same-audience condition would. Their results showed that moral
credentialing produced virtually identical effects across both conditions, suggesting that
moral credentialing effects might be driven more by self-perception motives than byimpression management concerns. This perspective, of course, has implications for theinterpretation of the recall data shown in Figure 2. Does the special failure to recall their
misconduct in the high-rationalizability/self-credentialed condition reflect participants’desire to deflect social condemnation, or might it reflect a more subtle form of denial
designed to protect participants’ self-concepts from recognizing the reality of theirmisdeeds? Although we lean toward the latter interpretation, for the reasons already noted,
the precise roles of self-deception and impression management motives in this and related
phenomena await explication by additional studies.
One potentially important limitation of the present study that must be mentioned is its soleuse of college students as participants. Although this is a common limitation of psychology
experiments, it could be of particular relevance to the phenomenon of moral credentialing.

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Specifically, one could argue that moral credentialing effects rest upon the utility ofcredentialing experiences for affirming an uncertain self-concept, and this uncertainty might
be especially pronounced among adolescents and young adults. Considering that the few
moral credentialing studies that have been conducted to date (Khan & Dhar, 2006; Monin &Miller, 2001) have all been conducted with similar samples, it would be useful to examine
whether other age groups show similar effects. Likewise, individual differences in selfcertainty could also be explored as potential moderators of moral credentialing in the realmof ethical misconduct, licensing, prejudice, or other value-relevant domains of interest.

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Recent research by Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) demonstrated that situationally-induced
positive affect can undercut the natural aversion people exhibit to utilitarian (but logicallyappropriate) choices in a classic ethical dilemma (the footbridge dilemma). Thus, by
inducing positive affect, these researchers changed participants’ moral judgments. Thisfinding raises the question of whether our credentialing task produced its effect on cheating
behavior simply by changing participants’ moods. Although a mood-as-mediator perspective
would not explain the interaction between rationalizability and moral credentialing that we
predicted and obtained, we attempted to rule out this explanation in a follow-up study inwhich participants were asked to rate the extent to which they currently felt happy, content,
pleasant, and good (taken from Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2006) after predicting either theirown behavior or the behavior of the average student at their university in the same ethicaldilemmas used in the present study. We found that the mood of individuals who predicted
their own behavior (M = 4.97, SD = 0.99) was no different than the mood of individuals who
predicted the behavior of the average student (M = 4.88, SD = 1.24), t(82) = 0.38, ns. Thisfinding suggests that the results of the present investigation cannot be interpreted as a simple
mood effect. Indeed, we would suggest that moral credentialing is actually a more direct
approach to self-defense than mood enhancement, as the latter merely counteracts theaffective consequences of engaging in (or contemplating) behavior that would threaten the
self-concept, whereas the former actually preempts the experience of self-threat in the firstplace. From this perspective, a mood boost might be analogous to taking a pain killer,
whereas moral credentialing might be analogous to preventing the experience of pain in thefirst place.
Implications

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Many of the moral transgressions that people are tempted to make in their daily lives (e.g.,taking office supplies for personal use, fudging on financial forms, pocketing a cashier’s
overpayment) are those for which the line between right and wrong can be readily blurredwith a minor perceptual adjustment or rationalization, which can set the stage for moral
credentialing effects. One such adjustment can be the very standards upon which a behavior
or decision is based, as demonstrated in research showing that such standards may be shiftedfrom one criterion to another to suit the goals and prejudices of the perceiver (e.g., Biernat &Manis, 1994; Norton et al., 2004; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007). This mechanism forrationalization seems especially pernicious and difficult to overcome, given that thestandards people emphasize in one context or another might never be inherently immoral.
Thus, people can reach self-serving conclusions that justify self-serving behaviors without
accruing any of the moral approbation that might result from overtly selfish standards. The
slipperiness of moral standards underscores the ease with which people can rationalize their
behaviors, suggesting that the opportunity for misdeeds to arise from credentialing processes
might be more routine than rare.
Our study also suggests that it is not necessary for people to do anything to buffer theiridentities against the implications of behaving immorally. Rather, they need only exercise
their imaginations to generate an effective moral buffer. There also appears to be someflexibility in the imagined behaviors on which people can morally credential themselves.
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Highly unlikely behaviors, such as giving a multimillion-dollar inheritance to a charity,
appear to be as capable of substantiating one’s moral credentials as the more realistic
behaviors imagined by participants in previous studies (e.g., Khan & Dhar, 2006). Being
able to use one’s imagination alone makes moral credentialing a powerful tool, but theability to credential oneself via outlandish imagined behaviors only enhances this power.
Whereas imagining a mundane act of morality (e.g., performing a random act of kindness toa stranger) might lead to a sense of obligation if one were to encounter the opportunity toengage in that behavior, imagining an unrealistic act of extreme morality (e.g., risking one’s
life to save a helpless child from a burning building) serves the dual goals of credentialing
the self and minimizing the risk of moral obligation – as long as one stays away fromburning buildings. Of course, people might also accrue moral points through actual moral
behaviors, in effect bartering small, moral deeds to rationalize larger misdeeds. The limits ofsuch bartering processes, particularly with respect to the “allowable” magnitude ofdifferences among bartered actions and the domain-specificity or non-specificity of “fairtrades” remains an important arena for future research on moral credentialing. In a subtle
way, the phenomenon of moral credentialing might have important implications for ethics
training programs. A recent series of meta-analyses have shown that both business-oriented
and science-oriented ethics training programs have very modest effects overall (Antes et al.,in press; Waples, Antes, Murphy, Connelly, & Mumford, 2009). Indeed, a recent
investigation of ethics training programs aimed at scientists revealed that some programs
actually resulted in less ethical decision-making after training than before (Antes, Wang,
Mumford, Brown, Connelly, & Devenport, in press). Considering the obvious goals of ethics
training, such detrimental effects are more than a little concerning. But why would thiscounter-intentional outcome occur? One possibility concerns the nature of the training andthe effects of moral credentialing. A common tool in such training programs is the dilemmabased scenario, which paints a relevant situation involving the temptation to engage in (orthe actual engagement in) unethical behavior, and which requires trainees to evaluate thebehavior or decisions of characters portrayed in the scenario. To the extent that these ethicalscenarios involve fairly obvious examples of misconduct – and perhaps especially if the
misconduct is extreme, such as data fabrication or falsification – the use of these scenarios
might inadvertently result in moral credentialing by trainees. Specifically, when people are
given the opportunity to judge the misconduct of another person, even a hypothetical person,
and to assert the immorality and unacceptability of that behavior, they could readily contrast
this behavior with their own history (all the more likely when the behavior is extreme) orcome to believe that they would never engage in such behavior if presented with a similar
situation.

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In a similar way, ethics training programs that focus on inculcating rules and principles ofmoral conduct might cause trainees to feel credentialed simply because they cite chapter andverse from a field-specific code of conduct. This ability, though potentially useful, could beparadoxical in its effects. When one is grappling with a simple dilemma that requires thestraightforward application of an ethical regulation, being well-versed in ethical rules andregulations should be beneficial. We would argue that such situations are analogous to the
low-rationalizability condition of our experiment, in which the nature of one’s behavior andthe ethics at play are generally unambiguous. However, the ethical dilemmas encountered in
the real world, rather than the hypothetical, paper-and-pencil world of ethics training
programs, are seldom so simple. Complexity is the calling card of real dilemmas, which
often involve multiple actors, an array of emotions, and even competing values, each ofwhich might be perfectly appropriate in its own right. In the midst of such complicateddilemmas, people who can think back to their rule-based ethics training might feel protectedfrom the pangs of conscience they would otherwise experience as they embark upon a selfserving course of action. In essence, their training allows them to feel incapable ofimmorality, an illusion that decision-making experts have cited as a factor that leads toEthics Behav. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 January 1.

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impaired judgment (Janis, 1972). They might even have an embossed training certificate thatmaterializes the otherwise internal credentials represented by their training. Thus armed,
trainees might be inadvertently equipped to engage in misbehavior that they can easily
rationalize.
If this admittedly speculative analysis is accurate, how then should we train business people
or researchers to work with integrity? One option is to equip them not just with regulations
for their behavior, but with strategies for maneuvering effectively within the minefields of
ethical dilemmas. Such training ought to include exercises that promote a sense of selfawareness and humility, revealing the ease with which trainees themselves can slip into therationalization process when motivated to do so. Exercises that promote this kind ofawareness, along with strategies for dealing with complex ethical dilemmas, has been field
tested recently among graduate students in the social, biological, and engineering sciences,with encouraging preliminary results (Kligyte et al., 2008; Mumford et al., 2008).
Incorporating similar approaches in other training programs in business and in other career
fields would appear to be a worthwhile venture for those interested in promoting effective
ethics training.
Conclusion

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The outcries of a distressed conscience might sometimes prove difficult to silence with any
single act of credentialing invoked on the front end of immoral conduct. For this reason, it
seems likely that people oscillate in an ongoing fashion between psychological defense
tactics and misbehaviors so as to convince themselves that what would otherwise be
construed as dishonorable is, in fact, morally neutral or even righteous, or that their bad
behavior can be disassociated from the content of their characters. Thus, rather than being a
prerequisite for indulging one’s dishonorable desires, moral credentialing might sometimes
occur alongside misbehavior, and when combined with the dissonance reduction strategies
documented in prior studies on value-violating behavior, the resulting amalgamation could
produce a psychological shield of such strength that many acts of misconduct are possible.

Acknowledgments
This research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (5R01NS049535-02).

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Figure 1.

Number of times participants cheated as a function of credentialing and rationalizability.

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Figure 2.

Bias in recall of misconduct (difference between actual and recalled cheating) as a functionof credentialing and rationalizability.

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