The Moral Balancing Project

An international research collaboration on the moral licensing and moral consistency of pro-environmental behaviours.

The phenomenon of moral balancing posits that upon taking ethical actions, people feel licensed to take unethical ones while maintaining a relatively stable moral self image. Contrastingly, some empirical evidence points to consistency – people’s ethical actions spill over to their subsequent behaviors and intentions.
So which one is it – when do people engage in licensing and when do they tend to be consistent? This question has implications for the complex global challenge of climate change, an issue that requires sustained pro-environmental actions. Therefore, we are conducting a Manylabs project to test moral balancing of pro-environmental behavior. To address existing gaps in literature, we are conducting a culturally diverse, behaviourally robust and high-powered test of moral balancing.

Conceived at the Moral Judgement and Behaviour workshop of the EASP 2022 Summer School in Wrocław, Poland, this international collaboration is now joined by 200+ collaborators from over 50 countries.