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Abstract
People are often faced with decisions that could be construed by others as morally questionable, and must make these decisions while maintaining at least the facade of morality. Because being moral is important for positive self-regard and appearing moral is a highly effective impression management technique, individuals rely on a variety of psychological strategies to create the appearance—to others and to themselves—of morality. This research explores cases where people are drawn to make judgments between individuals based on questionable criteria, particularly those involving certain social categories (e.g., gender or ethnicity). We suggest that individuals mask their biased decision-making through moral casuistry, by claiming that their decisions are motivated by more acceptable criteria—other aspects of the individuals such as their qualifications. We present studies that demonstrate people's extreme reluctance to cite social category as a factor in decision-making, then show how moral casuistry allows people to make selections based on this information but appear moral while doing so. In two domains, employment and college admissions decisions, we explore how participants justify decisions biased by social category information by arbitrarily reifying the value of their preferred candidate's qualifications.
