Intergenerational Hypocrisy: When an Organization’s Distant Past Limits Its Legitimacy to Practice or Preach in the Present

Abstract

Organizations often endure across multiple generations of members—and what one generation preaches may not always align with what another generation practices. We demonstrate that people attribute such inconsistency to hypocrisy, even when over half a century separates the practicing and preaching. Five experiments and three supplemental studies demonstrate this intergenerational hypocrisy effect (N = 4,482). Organizations were perceived as more hypocritical, their actions seemed less legitimate, and people were more motivated to protest against them when the organization’s words and deeds were (vs. were not) misaligned across generations of members. We test several moderators, and find that to attenuate the intergenerational hypocrisy effect, organizations can attribute their word–deed inconsistency to moral principles that they paid a tangible cost to uphold. The results suggest that organizations risk reputational damage in a wider array of situations than previously appreciated.