This research explored cases where people are drawn to make judgments between individuals based on questionable criteria, in particular those individuals' social group memberships. We suggest that individuals engage in casuistry to mask biased decision making, by recruiting more acceptable criteria to justify such decisions. We present 6 studies that demonstrate how casuistry licenses people to...

ISSUE ADDRESSED Most academic journals that publish studies involving human participants require evidence that the research has been approved by a human research ethics committee (HREC). Yet journals continue to receive submissions from authors who have failed to obtain such approval. In this paper, we provide an ethical justification of why journals should not, in general, publish articles des...