'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins

We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g., deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been closed anyway). We present seven preregistered studies (total N = 3784) examining the nature of this effect. In Studies 1 and 2 we find people felt less guilty when they discovered that a negative outcome following a self-standard violation “would have happened anyway” than if no such information was available across a variety of scenarios (Study 1) and spontaneously in a thought generation paradigm (Study 2). Studies 3 and 4 suggest this effect has both rational and motivated components. In Study 3, the overdetermined outcome defense was used for both others and the self, but more for the self, and in Study 4, the participants admitted that they would use the overdetermined outcome defense more than they felt they should. In Studies 5A, 5B and 6, we tested behavioral implications of this effect in self-control and prosocial behavior contexts. We found that, when people chose options that violate their self-standards over ones more consistent with their self-standards, guilt motivated them to actively seek overdetermination to justify their choice. In Study 6, we once again found that discovering that a negative outcome was overdetermined reduced guilt in participants in an incentive-compatible decision context. Our findings contribute to the literatures on outcome bias, justification, and irrational acquiescence.