The Influence of Visual Perspective on Moral Licensing Effect

Abstract

This study examined how visual perspective affected the moral licensing effect. It was hypothesized that participants would act less morally when a moral behavior was recalled or imagined with a first-person perspective, whereas the effect would reverse in the third-person perspective condition. Participants recalled (Study 1) or imagined (Study 2 and 3) either a moral or an immoral/a neutral behavior, with either one of the two visual perspectives. The behavioral intentions of different subsequent moral behaviors as well as a real donating behavior were measured. All experiments found the licensing effect in the first-person perspective conditions but mixed results in the third-person perspective conditions. Moreover, the proposed mediation of construal level was not supported.

Acknowledgment

We sincerely thank Chen Zhi-Qin, Gong Cheng-Jing-Yi, Lu Xing-Ying, and Zhou Zhen-Wei for their kind help in data collection. We extend our gratitude to Lu Jing-Yi for her kind suggestion in constructing the manuscript.

Ethical approval

The research project was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shanghai Normal University. The committee did not provide approval numbers. In Study 1 and Study 2, each participant received an informed consent before taking the experiment. In Study 3, each participants received an online version of and details informed consent before taking the experiment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [number 71601122]. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/mbgrs/.