Prospective moral licensing: Does anticipating doing good later allow you to be bad now?

Moral licensing, whereby behaving morally allows a person to subsequently behave immorally, has been demonstrated in numerous experiments. The current research examined the effects of prospective moral licensing: how planning to perform a future moral behavior affects the morality of current behavior. Across four studies we explored whether anticipating engaging in a moral behavior in the future (e.g., taking part in a fundraiser or donating blood) leads people to make a racially biased decision (Studies 1 and 2) or espouse racially biased attitudes (Studies 3 and 4) in the present. Participants who anticipated performing a moral action in the future displayed more racial bias than control participants. Additionally, prospective moral licensing occurred for both ambiguously and overtly prejudiced acts suggesting that prospective licensing is due to moral credits accumulating rather than moral credentials being established. These results demonstrate that anticipating a future moral act licenses people to behave immorally now and indicate that perceptions of morality encompass a wide variety of concepts, including past as well as anticipated future behavior.