Using personal attitudes to judge others: The roles of outcomes and consensus

The relative preference effect refers to the tendency for people with incompatible ethical views to differ in their evaluations of targets whose ethical decisions agree versus disagree with their own. For example, people who say they would keep a lost wallet ascribe less blame to a target who does the same than do people who say they would return the wallet. The relative preference effect does not require that people consider their ethical choices to be morally superior to the alternatives: The effect occurs even when people who endorse less ethically desirable alternatives (such as keeping a lost wallet) admit that the opposite alternative (such as returning the wallet) is more admirable or desirable, and also when they admit that they would teach their children to do the opposite. The two studies in this paper examined different explanations for the pervasiveness of the relative preference effect. Study 1 assessed the possibility that people evaluate targets who agree with them more favorably because they assume the targets' decisions will produce positive outcomes. Study 1 provided evidence against this interpretation by showing that the relative preference effect occurred when the target's decision produced negative as well as positive outcomes. Study 2 assessed the possibility that people evaluate agreeing others more favorably because they assume most people share their ethical preferences. This explanation was supported by a significant interaction between consensus information and agreement-disagreement information on blame attributions: The relative preference effect occurred when participants were provided with information indicating most of their peers agreed with their ethical decision, but not when they believed a majority of their peers disagreed. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.