The Government Receives Moral License to Commit Transgressions When Compared to Other Entities

Abstract In this paper, we examine moral judgments about different entities including individuals, corporations, nonprofits, and governments following a transgression. Although there is some research examining inferences about groups, there is little work addressing attributions about institutional entities such as governments. Across six studies we found that moral character judgments are greater for governmental entities compared to other entities. This effect was driven by moral licensing and the values one shares with the government. The finding was not caused by intuitions about paternalism, the relative age of governments compared to other entities, and was also not explained by nationalism or system justification. Discussion centers on implications of the data for moral licensing theory and moral attribution.