Daniel A. Effron

Embodied Temporal Perception of Emotion

The role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli was investigated with a temporal bisection task. Previous research has shown that individuals overestimate the duration of emotional, compared with neutral, faces (S. Droit-Volet, S. Brunot, & P. M. Niedenthal, 2004). The authors tested a role for embodiment in this effect. Participants estimated the duration of angry, happy, and neutral faces by comparing them to 2 durations learned during a training phase. Experimental participants held a pen in their mouths so as to inhibit imitation of the faces, whereas control participants could imitate freely. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. Implications for the role of embodiment in emotional perception are discussed.

Psychological License: When it is Needed and How it Functions

Abstract Differences among people in the actions they take or the opinions they express do not always reflect differences in underlying attitudes, preferences, or motivations. When people differ in the extent to which they are psychologically licensed (i.e., feel able to act without discrediting themselves), they will act differently despite having similar attitudes, preferences, and motivations. Wanting to do something is not sufficient to spur action; one must also feel licensed to do it. We show that feeling licensed can liberate people to express morally problematic attitudes that those who do not feel licensed are inhibited from expressing. We also show that feeling one lacks license can inhibit people from expressing even morally nonproblematic attitudes that those who feel licensed are comfortable expressing. This chapter explores a wide range of social phenomena in which licensing plays a role and identifies a number of variables that grant or revoke psychological license.

Affirmation, Acknowledgment of In-Group Responsibility, Group-Based Guilt, and Support for Reparative Measures

Three studies, 2 conducted in Israel and 1 conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, demonstrated that affirming a positive aspect of the self can increase ones willingness to acknowledge in-group responsibility for wrongdoing against others, express feelings of group-based guilt, and consequently provide greater support for reparation policies. By contrast, affirming ones group, although similarly boosting feelings of pride, failed to increase willingness to acknowledge and redress in-group wrongdoing. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated the mediating role of group-based guilt. That is, increased acknowledgment of in-group responsibility for out-group victimization produced increased feelings of guilt, which in turn increased support for reparation policies to the victimized group. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Letting People Off the Hook: When Do Good Deeds Excuse Transgressions?:

Three studies examined when and why an actor’s prior good deeds make observers more willing to excuse—or license—his or her subsequent, morally dubious behavior. In a pilot study, actors’ good deeds made participants more forgiving of the actors’ subsequent transgressions. In Study 1, participants only licensed blatant transgressions that were in a different domain than actors’ good deeds; blatant transgressions in the same domain appeared hypocritical and suppressed licensing (e.g., fighting adolescent drug use excused sexual harassment, but fighting sexual harassment did not). Study 2 replicated these effects and showed that good deeds made observers license ambiguous transgressions (e.g., behavior that might or might not represent sexual harassment) regardless of whether the good deeds and the transgression were in the same or in a different domain—but only same-domain good deeds did so by changing participants’ construal of the transgressions. Discussion integrates two models of why licensing occurs.

Inventing racist roads not taken: The licensing effect of immoral counterfactual behaviors

Six experiments examined how people strategically use thoughts of foregone misdeeds to regulate their moral behavior. We tested 2 hypotheses: 1st, that people will feel licensed to act in morally dubious ways when they can point to immoral alternatives to their prior behavior, and 2nd, that people made to feel insecure about their morality will exaggerate the extent to which such alternatives existed. Supporting the 1st hypothesis, when White participants could point to racist alternatives to their past actions, they felt they had obtained more evidence of their own virtue (Study 1), they expressed less racial sensitivity (Study 2), and they were more likely to express preferences about employment and allocating money that favored Whites at the expense of Blacks (Study 3). Supporting the 2nd hypothesis, White participants whose security in their identity as nonracists had been threatened remembered a prior task as having afforded more racist alternatives to their behavior than did those who were not threatened. This distortion of the past involved overestimating the number of Black individuals they had encountered on the prior task (Study 4) and exaggerating how stereotypically Black specific individuals had looked (Studies 5 and 6). We discuss implications for moral behavior, the motivated rewriting of ones moral history, and how the life unlived can liberate people to lead the life they want.

Cheating at the end to avoid regret.

How do people behave when they face a finite series of opportunities to cheat with little or no risk of detection? In 4 experiments and a small meta-analysis, we analyzed over 25,000 cheating opportunities faced by over 2,500 people. The results suggested that the odds of cheating are almost 3 times higher at the end of a series than earlier. Participants could cheat in 1 of 2 ways: They could lie about the outcome of a private coin flip to get a payoff that they would otherwise not receive (Studies 1-3) or they could overbill for their work (Study 4). We manipulated the number of cheating opportunities they expected but held the actual number of opportunities constant. The data showed that the likelihood of cheating and the extent of dishonesty were both greater when people believed that they were facing a last choice. Mediation analyses suggested that anticipatory regret about passing up a chance to enrich oneself drove this cheat-at-the-end effect. We found no support for alternative explanations based on the possibility that multiple cheating opportunities depleted peoples self-control, eroded their moral standards, or made them feel that they had earned the right to cheat. The data also suggested that the cheat-at-the-end effect may be limited to relatively short series of cheating opportunities (i.e., n < 20). Our discussion addresses the psychological and behavioral dynamics of repeated ethical choices.

Making Mountains of Morality From Molehills of Virtue Threat Causes People to Overestimate Their Moral Credentials

Seven studies demonstrate that threats to moral identity can increase how definitively people think they have previously proven their morality. When White participants were made to worry that their future behavior could seem racist, they overestimated how much a prior decision of theirs would convince an observer of their non-prejudiced character (Studies 1a-3). Ironically, such overestimation made participants appear more prejudiced to observers (Study 4). Studies 5 to 6 demonstrated a similar effect of threat in the domain of charitable giving—an effect driven by individuals for whom maintaining a moral identity is particularly important. Threatened participants only enhanced their beliefs that they had proven their morality when there was at least some supporting evidence, but these beliefs were insensitive to whether the evidence was weak or strong (Study 2). Discussion considers the role of motivated reasoning, and implications for ethical decision making and moral licensing.

How the Moralization of Issues Grants Social Legitimacy to Act on One’s Attitudes

Actions that do not have as their goal the advancement or protection of one’s material interests are often seen as illegitimate. Four studies suggested that moral values can legitimate action in the absence of material interest. The more participants linked sociopolitical issues to moral values, the more comfortable they felt advocating on behalf of those issues and the less confused they were by others’ advocacy (Studies 1 and 2). Crime victims were perceived as being more entitled to claim special privileges when the crime had violated their personal moral values (Studies 3 and 4). These effects were strongest when the legitimacy to act could not already be derived from one’s material interests, suggesting that moral values and material interest can represent interchangeable justifications for behavior. No support was found for the possibility that attitude strength explained these effects. The power of moralization to disinhibit action is discussed.

Reducing Exposure to Trust-Related Risks to Avoid Self-Blame

Three studies demonstrated that anticipated self-blame elicits more conservative decisions about risks that require trust than about otherwise economically identical risks that do not. Participants were more reluctant to invest money in a company when it risked failure due to fraud versus low consumer demand (Study 1), and to risk points in an economic game when its outcome ostensibly depended on another participant versus chance (Studies 2 and 3). These effects were mediated by anticipated self-blame (Studies 1 and 2). Additionally, participants who actually experienced a loss felt more self-blame when the loss violated their trust and became even more conservative in subsequent risk decisions relative to participants whose loss did not violate their trust (Study 3). No support emerged for alternative explanations based on either the perceived probability of incurring a loss or an aversion to losses that profit others. The motivational power of trust violations is discussed.

Cheating at the End to Avoid Regret

What happens when people have repeated opportunities to cheat? Across 5 studies, we gave 2,585 people over 25,000 opportunities to cheat. We observed a consistent pattern: Cheating increased at the...