Moral hypocrisy can be defined as a state of mind where one forgives their own immoral conduct but judges others who do the same. Though most people believe that their moral principles are based on objective principles, psychologists Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno of the Northeastern University believe in the opposite.
Their study shows that people not just forgive their own sins and transgressions but tend to ignore the mistakes made by the members of the same social groups (which even they belong to). They extend this leniency in moral judgement to these groups even if they are newly formed and based on trivial connections. This was the exact notion they used in their study. DeSteno and Valdesolo required subjects to assign one of the two tasks to both themselves and to an anonymous second party. The first used a random procedure that guaranteed fairness and the second was based on personal preference. The subjects were made to believe that the second party might or might not be similar to them. They then asked the subjects to identify and judge the morality and immorality of their own transgressions and others were asked to judge the transgressions committed by the second party.
As observed, the transgressions committed by individuals themselves were judged and identified mildly as compared to the ones committed by the second party. To this, Valdesolo says, “These findings speak to the profound sensitivity of even our most valued principles to group concerns,” The mind is always in its biased form. It provides support and forgives the mistakes created by oneself but does not do the same for others. In a similar fashion, it provides this privileged status to the ones who are in the same social group.
DeSteno says that distrust and animosity are derived from this fundamental bias of the mind which fails to believe in the immorality of transgressions of all parties including themselves. He also adds that one has to work towards recognising this bias in order to remediate its influence on inter group relations.
Akshara Palshetkar
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