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Miller and Monin (2001) did this great study where they demonstrated that when you give someone the chance to show off their egalitarian attitudes toward a minority group in a job selection task, those same participants would be more likely to discriminate against that group in a later job selection task. People establish their credentials as non-racists or non-prejudice against (fill in the blank) every day. Sometimes you will hear your friends (or yourself) start a sentence like this: “I have gay friends, but….” Usually what follows is some gross generalization about gays, or a blatant prejudicial statement.

Moral credentials give us license to say all sorts of terrible things about out-groups. In the case of a family dinner, Uncle Bill slaps the butter on his roll and proceeds to tell a racist joke. His nephew Niles (it’s a white family, can you tell?) becomes instantly mortified and offended and speaks up about it. Uncle Bill laughs at Niles and assures him: “Niles, some of my best friends are Black! Lighten up!”

Presumably, having Black/Gay/Latino/Female/Asian/etc friends or family is enough to embolden people to make prejudicial statements or act in prejudicial ways. In the Miller and Monin study, all people had to do was “hire” the African American candidate to establish credentials as non-racists. In the next task where they had to choose between hiring a White person or and African American, participants tended to prefer a White person.

For my thesis project, I planned a 2 part study where I aimed to a) replicate Miller and Monin’s moral credentials study using a modified selection task and b) test whether the phenomenon appears using gay men as the target for discrimination (rather than African Americans or women).