Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Past choices can influence subsequent choices in employee se-lection. Previous approaches rather described similar sequen-tial effects with feedback learning or the misperception of ran-domness. However, in the selection of job candidates also theaccumulation of the moral impact of previous choices mightinfluence subsequent choices. We investigated that questionby making two major contributions to the literature. First, wedeveloped an experimental paradigm for measuring sequentialchoices in employee selection and second, we implementeda widely applicable computational model, the Dependent Se-quential Sampling Model, for explaining sequential effects inchoices. By using this methodological approach, we uncov-ered sequential effects in employee selection. Participants(N=600) were especially motivated to compensate for morallydubious choices, with some participants showing consistentchoice behavior if their previous choices had been morally vir-tuous. These results support the assumption of asymmetriccompensation of morally dubious choices, sometimes referredto as the moral cleansing hypothesis.