Faculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business, náměstí Winstona Churchilla 4, Prague, 130 67, Czech Republic.
Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 16;12(1):13860. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16800-4.
Moral licensing posits that previous moral acts increase the probability of behaving immorally in the future. According to this perspective, rejecting bribes, even because they are too small, would create a kind of "license" for taking (presumably larger) bribes in the future. On the other hand, the desire for consistency in behavior predicts that previous rejection of bribes will increase the probability of rejection for bribes offered in the future. Using a laboratory task modeling the decision to take a bribe, we examined how resisting and succumbing to the temptation to take a bribe affects later bribe-taking. Participants (N = 297) were offered either low bribes first and high bribes later or vice versa. Low bribes were in general rejected more often and the results showed some weak, nonsignificant evidence that bribe-taking may be influenced by the order of the sizes of offered bribes. However, there was no evidence of an increased probability of taking bribes after being offered the low bribes first and thus no evidence in support of the moral licensing effect.
道德许可假设先前的道德行为会增加未来不道德行为的可能性。根据这一观点，拒绝贿赂，即使是因为贿赂太小，也会为未来接受（据推测更大的）贿赂创造一种“许可”。另一方面，行为一致性的愿望预测先前拒绝贿赂会增加未来拒绝提供的贿赂的可能性。我们使用一种模拟接受贿赂决策的实验室任务来检验抵制和屈服于接受贿赂的诱惑如何影响以后的受贿行为。参与者（N=297）首先被提供低贿赂，然后是高贿赂，或者相反。低贿赂通常被拒绝的频率更高，结果表明一些微弱的、不显著的证据表明，贿赂的接受可能受到提供的贿赂数额的顺序的影响。然而，没有证据表明在被提供低贿赂后接受贿赂的可能性增加，因此没有证据支持道德许可效应。
