Is Discrimination against disabled job candidates increased by previously acquired non-discriminatory moral credentials?

Abstract

Previous studies showed that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes towards others when their past behavior has established their credentials as non-prejudiced persons. We examined this moral licensing effect in organizational contexts on a sample of 318 elementary school teachers. First, participants were given the opportunity to disagree with a set of discriminatory sentences. Next, all participants were required to express their attitudes towards hiring a disabled person for a specific job within the educational working environment in a hypothetical scenario. We also investigated the associations of participants' decisions with other personal characteristics such as gender, age, and previous contact with persons with disabilities. We found that participants in the moral licensing condition expressed a stronger endorsement of the discriminatory decisional alternative. Results are discussed concerning the educational context regarding the inclusion of people with physical or mental disabilities within the academic working environment.