Moral licensing
Having done something good, or established credentials as a good person, makes people feel entitled to act less well afterwards. The past good deed works like a credit that covers a later debit.
What drives it
It lets a person keep a positive moral self-image while easing off effort or indulging a less admirable motive. Treat it as a plausible pattern to watch for, not a reliable law.
How it shows
Work
'I've championed diversity for years, so I can say this.' A leader who sponsored a big charity drive and then pushes through a harsh restructuring with no consultation. A team that celebrates its ethics training and then cuts corners on the next deadline.
Relationships
'After everything I've done for this family...' used to justify a selfish decision. The partner who does a big romantic gesture and then feels free to be inattentive for weeks.
Self
A small inner bookkeeping: 'I've been good, I deserve this.' You notice yourself pointing to a past virtue at the moment you are about to do something you would otherwise question.
What tells it apart
Moral disengagement: Licensing admits the later act is less good but feels it has been paid for; disengagement denies it was bad.
Psychological entitlement: Entitlement is a stable sense of deserving more than others; licensing is temporary and tied to a specific recent good act.
Impression management: Licensing works on the person's self-image even in private; impression management is aimed at an audience.
A test
Notice whether lapses cluster right after visible good acts or credentials, and whether the person cites those acts when the lapse is questioned.
Questions to carry
- What good deed came right before the lapse, and when was it mentioned once the lapse was questioned?
- After I have done something I'm proud of, what do I let myself get away with?
How strong the research is
mixed. A 2015 meta-analysis (Blanken and colleagues) reported a small-to-moderate effect, but several preregistered replications failed and bias-corrected estimates (Kuper and Bott, 2019) put the true effect near zero, so it is smaller and less reliable than first reported.
Where it comes from
Benoît Monin and Dale Miller, 2001; Anna Merritt, Daniel Effron and Benoît Monin, 2010
Sources
- Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities (1999)