The Government Receives Moral License to Commit Transgressions When Compared to Other Entities

Abstract

In this paper, we examine moral judgments about different entities including individuals, corporations, nonprofits, and governments following a transgression. Although there is some research examining inferences about groups, there is little work addressing attributions about institutional entities such as governments. Across six studies we found that moral character judgments are greater for governmental entities compared to other entities. This effect was driven by moral licensing and the values one shares with the government. The finding was not caused by intuitions about paternalism, the relative age of governments compared to other entities, and was also not explained by nationalism or system justification. Discussion centers on implications of the data for moral licensing theory and moral attribution.

Notes

Notes

1 An additional item asked whether the entity was rational. However, this item did not correlate with the moral character scale and is not discussed further.

2 Several additional measures were included in Study 1. The intentionality of the action performed and how blameworthy the action did not show mean differences across condition, however, the correlations showed that intention and blame were negatively related to moral character. We do not discuss these measures further here. We also asked participant to rate the extent to which Americans shared a common fate, have many characteristics in common, or possess a real existence as a group and they completed the 16-item Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Ho et al., 2012) measure. However, the entitativity of Americans and SDO measure did not interact with condition to affect moral character judgments. Finally, national identity and political orientation were explored as potential covariates but these were not used because there was no effect of political orientation and national identity was shown to be a moderator. When further examined, it was found that while national identity increased moral judgments of the government, government morality ratings were much higher in the government compared to the conditions. Further, when political orientation was used as a covariate the effects reported remained. As the effect of national identity and political orientation would seem to be important in measuring attitudes toward the government, political orientation was measured in all studies reported here. Further, national identity was measured in all studies except Study 3 and Study 6.

3 Effect sizes for contrasts here and throughout the manuscript were calculated using the following formula: √(t2/t + df).

4 As Study 2a was nearly identical to Study 1, national identity, blame, and intention were again measured. Intention showed no difference by condition, but blame attributions were lower in the government than corporation conditions. No other effects emerged. National identity and political orientation did not interact with condition and the effect reported remained when these variables were used as covariates.

5 Positive motive attributions were also found to mediate the relationship between condition and moral character and unethical act ratings in Study 1.

6 To ensure that people were not motivated to rate the U.S. government as more moral than the other entities, the American system justification scale was included (Kay & Jost, 2003). This 8-item scale measures one’s perceptions of how just, fair, and legitimate the American system is. However, this scale did not interact with condition when used as a covariate and did not alter the findings reported here.

7 The correlation between system justification, political orientation, identification with one’s country, social dominance orientation, and one’s social capital or generalized trust were correlated to morality ratings using conditions involving the government.