Moral Hypocrisy and the Impact of the ‘active’ Versus ‘passive’ Nature of Misbehavior

People are likely to systematically approach the ethics of others more critically compared to their own ethics. Moral hypocrisy reflects this egocentric ethics perspective as it refers to the phenomenon whereby people tolerate their own questionable behavior more than similar misbehavior of others. Recently, researchers call far more studies examining the conditions tempering this moral hypocrisy phenomenon. The present study complies with this call by showing evidence for a particular boundary condition. Findings demonstrate that individuals tolerate their own moral transgressions more compared to similar transgressions of others when these transgressions involve wrongdoing by action. In case of wrongdoing by inaction, findings show no difference between the evaluations of one’s own questionable acts versus those of others.