A Meta-Analytic Review of Moral Licensing

No abstract is available for this paper.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

• Publication date

  2015-02-25

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/0146167215572134PMID 25716992
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Prospective moral licensing: Does anticipating doing good later allow you to be bad now?

  2015cited by this paper
• “Because I Am Worth It”

  2014cited by this paper
• Making Mountains of Morality From Molehills of Virtue

  2014cited by this paper
• Three attempts to replicate the moral licensing effect

  2014influential reference
• A matter of perspective: why past moral behavior can sometimes encourage and other times discourage future moral striving

  2014cited by this paper
• Morality in everyday life

  2014cited by this paper
• Smug Alert! Exploring self-licensing behavior in a cheating game

  2014cited by this paper
• Permission to be prejudiced: Legitimacy credits in the evaluation of advertisements

  2014cited by this paper
• The unhealthy road not taken: Licensing indulgence by exaggerating counterfactual sins

  2013cited by this paper
• Self-Licensing and Financial Rewards: Is Morality For Sale?

  2013cited by this paper
• Anti social behavior and self licensing: experimental evidence from a gangster game

  2013cited by this paper
• Inventing racist roads not taken: the licensing effect of immoral counterfactual behaviors.

  2012influential reference
• Doing Good Leads to More Good: The Reinforcing Power of a Moral Self-Concept

  2012cited by this paper
• Rules or Consequences? The Role of Ethical Mind-Sets in Moral Dynamics

  2012influential reference
• When Does Feeling Moral Actually Make You a Better Person? Conceptual Abstraction Moderates Whether Past Moral Deeds Motivate Consistency or Compensatory Behavior

  2012cited by this paper
• The long, steep path to equality: progressing on egalitarian goals.

  2012cited by this paper
• The strategic pursuit of moral credentials

  2012cited by this paper
• Cognitive consistency: a fundamental principle in social cognition

  2012cited by this paper
• License to sin: Self-licensing as a mechanism underlying hedonic consumption

  2012cited by this paper
• Moral Credentialing and the Rationalization of Misconduct

  2011cited by this paper
• Striving for the Moral Self: The Effects of Recalling Past Moral Actions on Future Moral Behavior

  2011influential reference
• Ironic Effects of Dietary Supplementation

  2011cited by this paper
• When Sunlight Fails to Disinfect: Understanding the Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest

  2011cited by this paper
• Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior

  2011cited by this paper
• Conducting Meta-Analyses in R with the metafor Package

  2010cited by this paper
• Psychological license: When it is needed and how it functions.

  2010influential reference
• Do Green Products Make Us Better People?

  2010influential reference
• Moral Self-Licensing: When Being Good Frees Us to Be Bad

  2010cited by this paper
• Letting People Off the Hook: When Do Good Deeds Excuse Transgressions?

  2010cited by this paper
• Compensatory Ethics

  2010cited by this paper
• Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners

  2009influential reference
• Endorsing Obama licenses favoring Whites

  2009influential reference
• Indulgence as Self Reward for Prior Shopping Restraint

  2009cited by this paper
• Recalling Past Temptations: An Information-Processing Perspective on the Dynamics of Self-Control

  2008cited by this paper
• Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness

  2007cited by this paper
• G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences

  2007influential reference
• Moral sentiments and cooperation: Differential influences of shame and guilt

  2007cited by this paper
• Hourly Payment and Volunteering: The Effect of Organizational Practices on Decisions About Time Use

  2007cited by this paper
• Licensing Effect in Consumer Choice

  2006influential reference
• Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing

  2006cited by this paper
• The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest

  2005cited by this paper
• Goals as Excuses or Guides: The Liberating Effect of Perceived Goal Progress on Choice

  2005cited by this paper
• Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

  2005cited by this paper
• One Hundred Years of Social Psychology Quantitatively Described

  2003cited by this paper
• Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta‐analysis

  2002influential reference
• Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice.

  2001influential reference
• Why Don't Moral People Act Morally? Motivational Considerations

  2001cited by this paper
• Practical Meta-Analysis

  2000cited by this paper
• Publication bias in meta-analysis: its causes and consequences.

  2000cited by this paper
• Omnibus test of normality using the Q statistic

  1999cited by this paper
• Fixed- and random-effects models in meta-analysis.

  1998cited by this paper
• Bias in meta-analysis detected by a simple, graphical test

  1997cited by this paper
• GPOWER: A general power analysis program

  1996cited by this paper
• Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic.

  1991cited by this paper
• Large Sample Multivariate Procedures for Comparing and Combining Effect Sizes Within a Single Study

  1987cited by this paper
• Statistical Methods for Meta-Analysis

  1987cited by this paper
• Meta-analysis in clinical trials.

  1986cited by this paper
• Meta-Analytic Procedures for Combining Studies With Multiple Effect Sizes

  1986cited by this paper
• Estimation of a Single Effect Size: Parametric and Nonparametric Methods

  1985cited by this paper
• The Psychology of Sunk Cost

  1985cited by this paper
• Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice

  1985cited by this paper
• Monte Carlo Studies of Effect Size Estimates and Their Approximations in Meta-Analysis.

  1984cited by this paper
• On the consequences of priming: Assimilation and contrast effects

  1983cited by this paper
• Self-Perception Theory

  1972cited by this paper
• Theories of cognitive consistency: a sourcebook.

  1968cited by this paper
• Compliance without pressure: the foot-in-the-door technique.

  1966cited by this paper
• A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

  1957cited by this paper
• Attitudes and cognitive organization.

  1946cited by this paper
• Bulletin Personality and Social Psychology Moral Credentialing by Association: the Importance of Choice and Relationship Closeness on Behalf Of: Society for Personality and Social Psychology

  year unknowncited by this paper
• : Large

  year unknowncited by this paper
• PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article MONEY, KISSES, AND ELECTRIC SHOCKS: On the Affective Psychology of Risk

  year unknowncited by this paper

• From inspiration to justification: the paradoxical impact of coworker citizenship behavior

  2026cites this paper
• Compensatory Health Beliefs as a Double-Edged Sword: A Dual-Path Model of Licensing and Cognitive Erosion in Multiple Health Behaviors.

  2026cites this paper
• Do Conservation and Citizenship Green Behaviors Spill Over Within and Between Work and Nonwork Contexts? A Longitudinal Study

  2026cites this paper
• ‘The Dark Side of Ethical Leadership’: How Machiavellianism and Moral Licensing Encourage Knowledge Hiding?

  2026cites this paper
• Unraveling the behavioral mechanisms underlying rebound effects of sustainability-oriented interventions: a qualitative comparative analysis

  2026cites this paper
• Bringing contact interventions to the lab: Effects of brief bilateral discussions on interethnic trust in Senegal

  2026cites this paper
• The licensing effect of green luxury: Investigating the influence of green marketing on consumer purchase intentions for luxury products

  2026cites this paper
• Environmental activism, dark triad traits, and left-wing authoritarianism: A constructive replication study

  2026cites this paper
• Relationship between firm value, environment, social, and governance – Strengths and controversies

  2026cites this paper
• How corporate philanthropy influences consumers’ ecotourism consumption intention? A moral licensing perspective

  2026cites this paper
• Improving the Ethical Permissibility of Medical Electives in Lower-Resource Settings.

  2026cites this paper
• Hide it or let it be? A moral license perspective of the effect of state ownership on time-to-regulatory enforcement

  2026cites this paper
• Wood heating and moral licensing: A survey study

  2026cites this paper
• Attentional Reweighting in Adolescent Moral Impression Updating and the Emergence of Permissible Immorality.

  2026cites this paper
• Investigating the Effects of Eco-Friendly Service Options on Rebound Behavior in Ride-Hailing

  2026cites this paper
• Perceived organizational status and bootleg innovation: the role of moral licensing in breaking rules

  2025cites this paper
• “Ain’t that a shame”: moral costs and fiscal crimes

  2025cites this paper
• Eating Fewer Animals: A Defense of Reducetarianism

  2025cites this paper
• Testing Spillovers in Resource Conservation: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

  2025cites this paper
• Daily Self-deception: An Analysis Based on Clothing and Dietary Needs

  2025cites this paper
• The relationship between negative life events and problematic social networking use among Chinese high school students: the moderating role of physical activity

  2025cites this paper
• Events and environmental sustainability: investigating the impact of environmental messaging and spillover mechanisms at a major sporting event in Sweden

  2025cites this paper
• When a Star Shines Too Bright: The Impact of a High-Status Minority Member on Pursuing Diversity Goals

  2025cites this paper
• Spillover Effects of Monitoring: An Experiment on Lying

  2025cites this paper
• Shielding or propelling? Political connections and corporate environmental sustainability: the moderating role of social performance feedback

  2025cites this paper
• When Values Matter More than Behavior: Behavioral Integrity in Air Travel and Climate Policy Support

  2025cites this paper
• Ethics of online health-related philanthrotainment

  2025cites this paper
• Corporate labor violations: Do CEOs’ public charity affiliations matter?

  2025cites this paper
• What you don't know, can't hurt you: Avoiding donation requests for environmental causes

  2025cites this paper
• When doing good helps doing better: moral licensing of blatant transgressions with ambiguous brand responsibility through CSR

  2025cites this paper
• Secondhand fashion consumers exhibit fast fashion behaviors despite sustainability narratives

  2025cites this paper
• Delineating positive spillover, negative spillover, and licencing within the pro-environmental literature

  2025cites this paper
• The positive effect of moral self-concept on fraudulent behavior and the need for moral cleansing

  2025cites this paper
• It is complicated: Tax havens, corporate social responsibility, and corporate social irresponsibility

  2025cites this paper
• Take the Good With the Bad, and the Bad With the Good? An Experiment on Pro‐Environmental Compensatory Behavior

  2025cites this paper
• How hospitality employees’ pro-environmental behavior negatively affects organizational citizenship behaviors: the multilevel moderating effect of green transformational leadership

  2025cites this paper
• Gamification in C2C secondary marketplace apps: from motivating sustainable behavior to unintended overconsumption

  2025cites this paper
• Circular intentions, minimal actions: The psychology of doing less in hospitality - An integrative review.

  2025cites this paper
• Replicability and generalizability of the repeated exposure effect on moral condemnation of fake news

  2025influential citation
• The relevance of relevance: A conceptual framework for identifying willful ignorance.

  2025cites this paper
• Study of Residential Power Demand Behavior from a Consumer Psychological Perspective

  2025cites this paper
• Remembering before acting: The role of episodic memory in future prosocial behavior in preschoolers.

  2025cites this paper
• The hidden benefits of CSR: Corporate philanthropy begets giving of employees

  2025cites this paper
• The effect of skilled versus nonskilled community service on auditor behavior

  2025cites this paper
• Come to Your Senses: Initial Evidence That Scents but Not Pronouns Inspire Charitability

  2025cites this paper
• Fostering urban nature: How identity dynamics and future envisioning drive biodiversity conservation in cities

  2025cites this paper
• The illusion of moral superiority: Evidence from the energy crisis

  2025cites this paper
• Observation Moderates the Moral Licensing Effect: A Meta-Analytic Test of Interpersonal and Intrapsychic Mechanisms.

  2025cites this paper
• Consistent Killers, Benevolent Balancers, or Contextually Moderated Moralists?

  2025cites this paper
• Environmental sustainability at work: It’s time to unleash the full potential of industrial and organizational psychology

  2025cites this paper
• The paradox of friendship-and-love: distinguishing dishonesty from insincerity à la Adam Smith

  2025cites this paper
• Ethical discourse on pro-environmental behavior: a systematic literature review using PRISMA

  2025cites this paper
• Do cute language style chatbots make consumers more unethical?

  2025cites this paper
• Are You Truly Green? The Impact of Self-Quantification on the Sincerity of Consumers’ Green Behaviors and Sustained Willingness

  2025cites this paper
• A Study of a Hypothetical Pandemic by Climate Change: Focusing on Construal Level Theory of Psychological Distance with Insights from EPPM and Moral Foundations

  2025cites this paper
• Leveraging social norms for sustainable behaviour

  2025cites this paper
• The leverage role of feedback framing in promoting the spillover effect of idle item recycling

  2025cites this paper
• Exposure to individual climate solutions does not reduce support for systemic solutions: a cross-cultural study in Australia and Iran

  2025cites this paper
• Psychological ownership of health promotes self and other-oriented health behaviors

  2025cites this paper
• The impact factor: The effect of actual impact information and perceived donation efficacy on donors' repeated donations

  2025cites this paper
• Better Innovation for a Better World

  2025cites this paper
• Behavioral rebound effect and moral compensation: An online experiment

  2025cites this paper
• Moral Judgment and Cheating: Evidence of A Knowledge–Behavior Link in Early Childhood

  2025cites this paper
• Are morally courageous leaders more effective?

  2025cites this paper
• Pro-environmental behavior and environmentalist movements: Evidence from the identification with Fridays for Future

  2025cites this paper
• Is Investment in Prevention Correlated with Insurance Fraud? Theory and Experiment

  2025cites this paper
• Do identity or guilt-based appeals lead to environmental spillover effects?

  2025cites this paper
• Moral Accounting and Real Effort: Experimental Evidence 

  2025cites this paper
• Guardians of the Green: Exploring Climate Advocacy, Data Privacy-Conscious Marketing, and Social Moral Licensing in Regenerative Tourism in Hawaii

  2024cites this paper
• More Questions About Excellencism, Perfectionism, and Attitudes Toward Cheating in Professional Baseball: A Look at Potential Mediators and Doping Attitudes.

  2024cites this paper
• Can Green Needs Always Promote Green Innovation? Moral Licensing in Corporate Environmental Responsibility

  2024influential citation
• Residential water choices: Assessing the willingness to adopt alternative water sources by examining risk perceptions and personal norms in Belgium

  2024cites this paper
• Are Fairness Perceptions Related to Moral Licensing Behavior? Evidence From Tax Compliance

  2024influential citation
• Linking creativity with unethical behaviors: investigating when and why creativity predicts unethical pro-organizational behavior

  2024cites this paper
• Effects of sampling healthy versus unhealthy foods on subsequent food purchases

  2024cites this paper
• How people evaluate individuals who act morally prior to acting immorally: An examination of developmental change in moral evaluation, social preference, and prediction of moral behaviors.

  2024cites this paper
• A multiple behaviour temporal network analysis for health behaviours during COVID-19.

  2024cites this paper
• Being moral motivates consumers to work harder and accept challenges

  2024cites this paper
• “Fool Me Once” Or “Slippery Slope”? A Study of Purchasing Managers' Reaction to Repeated Supplier Sustainability Incidents

  2024cites this paper
• Religious Dietary Practices: Health Outcomes and Psychological Insights From Various Countries

  2024cites this paper
• Sustainable fashion knowledge: nurturing individual responsibility through spiritual and emotional sustainable capacities in the fashion industry

  2024cites this paper
• Book-Tax Differences during the Crisis: Does Corporate Social Responsibility Matter?

  2024cites this paper
• Unethical Behavior in the Name of the Family: Exploring the Consequences of Unethical Pro-Family Behavior on Employees’ Work and Life

  2024cites this paper
• The more the better? Synergies of prosocial interventions and effects on behavioural spillovers

  2024cites this paper
• Revisiting positive body image to demonstrate how body neutrality is not new.

  2024cites this paper
• Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world

  2024cites this paper
• What About Me? An Essay on Creating Nonprofit Ventures

  2024cites this paper
• Food for Future: The Impact of Menu Design on Vegetarian Food Choice and Menu Satisfaction in a Hypothetical Hospital Setting

  2024cites this paper
• Do fairness perceptions influence moral licensing behavior? Evidence from tax compliance

  2024cites this paper
• Exploring rebound effects in Access-Based services (ABS)

  2024cites this paper
• Relationships Among Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Counterproductive Work Behavior, and Sexual Harassment Based on a Colleague’s Sex or Gender

  2024cites this paper
• Identity and voluntary efforts for climate protection

  2024cites this paper
• Competition and Collaboration in Crowdsourcing Communities: What happens when peers evaluate each other?

  2024cites this paper
• Pro-environmental Behavior and Environmentalist Movements: Evidence from the Identification with Fridays for Future

  2024cites this paper
• Eco-guilt and eco-shame in everyday life: an exploratory study of the experiences, triggers, and reactions

  2024cites this paper
• Does auditor assurance of client prosocial activities affect subsequent reporter-auditor negotiations?

  2024cites this paper
• Morally Charged: Why People Prefer to Compare Themselves With Others Who Are Less Environmentally Friendly Than Themselves

  2024cites this paper
• Brands and activism: ecosystem and paradoxes

  2024cites this paper
• Sticky brown sludge everywhere: can sludge explain barriers to green behaviour?

  2024cites this paper
• Consumers’ willingness to buy meat and seafood products close to the expiry date: an exploratory study from Denmark

  2024cites this paper