Research Summary
Research Summary
"I Read Playboy for the Articles": Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences
Description
When people behave in ways that might appear selfish, prejudiced or perverted, they engage a host of strategies designed to justify questionable behavior with rational excuses: “I hired my son because he’s more qualified.” “I promoted Ashley because she does a better job than Aisha.” Or in the example from our title, and the subject of one of our experimental investigations, “I read Playboy for the articles.” Motives behind individual decisions are hard to prove, but systematic differences between groups of decisions can show aggregate biases. In this chapter, we first describe two means by which individuals rationalize and justify questionable behavior, one which focuses on preemptive actions people take before engaging in such behavior – moral licensing or credentialing – and one which focuses on concurrent strategies, examining how people restructure situations such that their behavior seems less questionable. We conclude by briefly reviewing two additional strategies for coping with such difficult situations: forgoing making decisions and forgetting one’s decisions altogether.