Self-righteousness

Abstract: Recent research suggests that self-righteousness is bounded, arising more reliably in evaluations of immoral actions than in evaluations of moral actions. Here, we test four implications of this asymmetry in self-righteousness and the mechanism explaining it. We find that people are less likely to make negative character inferences from their own unethical behavior than from others' unethical behavior (Experiment 1), believe they would feel worse after an unethical action than others (Experiment 2), and believe they are less capable of extreme unethical behavior than others (Experiment 3). We observe weaker self-other differences in evaluations of ethical actions. This occurs partly because people base evaluations of themselves on their own moral intentions, leading to predictable individual differences. People more likely to ascribe cynical motives to their own behavior exhibit a smaller asymmetry in self-righteousness (Experiment 4). Self-righteousness seems better characterized as feeling "less evil than thou" than feeling "holier than thou."

Abstract: We all know of persons whose words and actions we would at least sometimes want to describe as self-righteous. Indeed one striking feature of self-righteousness is its prevalence. It can be found across economic classes and political and social spectra. We can see it in religious believers of many different creeds, in humanists and atheists, in smokers and non-smokers, in vegetarians and omnivores, and on both the political left and the right. In fact people who have little else in common may share a tendency to self-righteous behavior. Yet it has no defenders, in the sense that no individuals would like to hear themselves or their friends described as selfrighteous. It is difficult to imagine the non-sarcastic avowal of claims such as, ‘‘Spending time with Bob is enjoyable, since he is really self-righteous’’ or ‘‘Jane would make a great colleague because she is so self-righteous.’’ The designation ‘‘self-righteous’’ is a condemnation, if not an outright insult. This is paradoxical, as righteousness or justice is an aspect, perhaps the very foundation, of selfrighteousness. Self-righteousness consists in either exaggerated or inappropriate claims of moral injury or personal moral development, or excessive or misplaced public moral pronouncements, which may be true or false. In the first case, the aptness of the charge of being self-righteous, and so a moral assessment of the actions or speech which are the target of the charge, rests on the acceptance or rejection of antecedent moral claims. Yet in the second case the resolution of the moral issue is different. Even when we are in the right, and know that we are clearly in the right, there is good reason to refrain from the kind of behavior that warrants a charge of selfrighteousness.