We argue here that (1) our account can handle these criticisms and that (2) no other rival account adequately addresses Bell's challenge of explaining what is uniquely objectionable about hypocritical blame. Recently, however, our account has come under criticism. Of those writing on hypocrisy, only we offer a direct response to Bell's challenge. She raises a challenge: one must explain what is distinct about hypocritical blame such that the hypocritical blamer lacks the standing to blame, even if the arrogant or petty blamer does not.

Macalester Bell points out that the fact that hypocrisy is a moral fault does not yet explain why hypocritical blame is standingless blame. According to the Nonhypocrisy Condition on standing, R has the standing to blame some other agent S for a violation of some norm N only if R is not hypocritical with respect to blame for violations of N. It is widely agreed that hypocrisy can undermine one's moral standing to blame. We discuss how observers will judge someone against different ethical standards depending on where she or he works. The results suggest that employees are seen as morally obligated to uphold the values that their organization promotes, even by people outside of the organization. did not) contradict a value promoted by an organization where he had once interned. In Study 4, participants were less likely to select a job candidate whose transgression did (vs. The results did not support the possibility that inconsistent transgressions simply seemed more harmful. Participants judged employees more harshly for the same transgression when it was inconsistent with ethical values the employees’ organization promoted, and ascriptions of hypocrisy mediated this effect (Studies 1–3). Four experiments document the hypocrisy-by-association effect, whereby failing to practice what an organization preaches can make an employee seem hypocritical and invite moral condemnation. Hypocrisy occurs when people fail to practice what they preach. The findings have implications for using cognitive dissonance as means of changing behavior in applied settings, especially those in which people already support the desired goal, but their behavior is not consistent with those beliefs. Subjects who were merely reminded that they had wasted water, or who only made the public commitment, did not take shorter showers than control subjects. Compared to controls, subjects in the hypocrisy condition took significantly shorter showers.

The results were consistent with this reasoning. The “hypocrisy” condition-in which subjects made the public commitment after being reminded of their past behavior-was expected to be dissonance-arousing, thereby motivating subjects to increase their efforts to conserve water. Using a 2 × 2 factorial design, we manipulated subjects “‘mindfulness” that they had sometimes wasted water while showering, and then varied whether they made a “public commitment” urging other people to take shorter showers. In a field experiment on water conservation, we aroused dissonance in patrons of the campus recreation facility by making them feel hypocritical about their showering habits.

Saying one thing and doing another