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A matter of perspective: why past moral behavior can sometimes encourage and other times discourage future moral striving
Author(s) -
Susewind Moritz,
Hoelzl Erik
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12214
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , moral disengagement , psychology , social cognitive theory of morality , moral behavior , moral development , social psychology , moral psychology , moral reasoning , focus (optics) , epistemology , philosophy , physics , artificial intelligence , computer science , optics
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the role of different perspectives people take on their past moral and nonmoral behavior. Across two experiments, we show that when people focus on progress toward personal goals, past moral behavior leads to less future moral striving compared to past nonmoral behavior. However, when people focus on commitment toward personal goals, past moral behavior tends to lead to more future moral striving compared to past nonmoral behavior. Our results integrate seemingly contradictive empirical evidence from past research, relying on the overarching theoretical framework of goal regulation theory.