Abstract
The effect of making a moral decision on ratings of moral and immoral behaviors was investigated to see if there were differences based on whether the participant made a moral or immoral decision prior to completing the
questionnaire. It was hypothesized that those participants who made an immoral decision prior to completing the questionnaire would create cognitive dissonance within themselves and thus rate the behaviors of others differently than those who made a moral decision. Experiment 1 resulted in significant results for one of four scenarios, suggesting that participants who made an immoral decision prior to rating an immoral behavior would rate that immoral behavior as a worse behavior. Experiment 2 refined the experimental design, but yielded no significant results.
