People who say they hold strong moral values often downplay their own transgressions

You might expect people who claim to have a strong moral character not only to behave more ethically but also to hold themselves to the same standards as everyone else. However, according to a recent paper in the British Journal of Psychology, such people can in fact be more prone to moral hypocrisy, judging others harshly while giving themselves a free pass. This was especially true for those who cared more about managing their reputation. This work suggests that at least some people claim the moral high ground because they think it will boost their social standing, rather than because they truly subscribe to those ideals.

In the first experimental study, Mengchen Dong at the VU Amsterdam and colleagues asked 198 mostly student participants from the Netherlands to evaluate four scenarios that described a moral transgression, such as the sharing of information about a confidential project with a friend. Some participants imagined that they had committed this transgression; for the others, the transgressor was a 'co-worker'. Afterwards, they assigned levels of moral blame to either themselves or the co-worker.

To gather data on self-reported moral character, the team used a scale that measured sensitivity to justice. (Participants rated how upset they would feel if someone was not given a reward they deserved, for example). The participants also completed a questionnaire that assessed their level of motivation to manage their reputation (asking about their willingness to change their behaviour to impress others, for example.)

The results showed that for those who weren't too concerned about managing their reputation, participants with high moral character scores did in fact place harsher blame on themselves than on the co-worker. However, among people who worried about their reputation, participants who had high moral character scores assigned harsher blame to others than to themselves. That is, they showed evidence of moral hypocrisy: despite purporting to care about justice, they were actually more lenient towards their own moral failings.

In the next, online study, the team assessed a different aspect of moral character — moral identity. This is the extent to which someone feels that moral attitudes and behaviours, such as being caring, compassionate and helpful, are key to their personal identity.

A total of 301 US-based participants completed moral identity and reputation management scales. These participants then either distributed, or witnessed the distribution of, a total of $10. There were two ways in which this could be done: assigning $5 to both the 'distributor' and a 'recipient' (the fair choice) or assigning $8 to the distributor and $2 to the recipient (the selfish choice). Afterwards, the participants judged the acceptability of the choice.

About two thirds of those given the 'distributor' role did in fact make the fair choice. What's more, moral identity scores did relate to actual behaviour – those with higher scores were more likely to make the fair choice, and reputation management scores had no impact on this.

However, when the choice was selfish, people who'd scored higher for moral identity gave other people lower acceptability scores than they gave themselves. Again, this was especially true for those who were more concerned about managing their reputation.

Participants with both strong self-reported moral character and strong reputation management concerns also did not judge fair choices any more positively than the other participants did. This suggests that they view moral condemnation as a more useful tool than moral praise to enhance their own reputation. "People may thus readily employ condemnation as a strategy to demonstrate their righteousness to others," the team writes.

More work will be needed to explore these dynamics outside of the lab. Giving anonymous responses in an online study is one thing; in the real world, a politician or a business leader who professes to be a moral person — and who knows that their moral actions and judgements will be monitored — may behave differently. They might be less prone to moral double standards. Alternatively, if their reputation concerns are extremely high, perhaps they might be even more prone to them.

For now, the work does support the idea that it's wise to be at least a little cynical about moral claims. "A well-known Golden Rule of morality is to treat others as you wish to be treated yourself," the team writes. And yet their results do suggest that, when judging others, at least some people who profess to have a strong moral character are even less likely to follow it than everyone else.