Have you ever worked hard for thirty minutes and decided to take an hour long break because “you deserved it”? Have you ever justified your friend’s bad decision because “they’re a good person”? If so, you may have fallen prey to the trap of moral licensing. Moral licensing is the phenomenon where people use past good deeds to justify doing “immoral” things. We often believe that a few questionable actions will be balanced out by the good decisions we made in the past.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this phenomenon extends to our responses to the climate crisis. How many of us have posted an infographic about plastic on social media and then neglected to consider our own carbon footprint? How many of us have recycled a single water bottle and then proceeded to throw every other piece of plastic into the landfill? Once you know what to look for, you’ll see that this effect is shockingly prevalent in our own behavior.
Researchers at the University of Sussex have confirmed this phenomenon. They conducted a study in which participants were asked to fill out a survey that made them feel like they were environmentally conscious and then offered them the option to find out more about their carbon footprint. The evidence revealed that participants with more pro-environmental attitudes who were reminded of frequent previous pro-environmental behavior were less likely to seek information about their carbon footprint. This is consistent with previous knowledge on moral licensing; where people who believe they have done good in the past become complacent and refuse to make further progress.
Another study conducted by researchers at the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Systems corroborates these results. They monitored the water use and electricity use of two groups of households; one group was given feedback on their weekly water consumption while the other was not. The results showed that residents who received weekly feedback on their water consumption lowered their water use but at the same time increased their electricity consumption compared to control subjects. This is another classic case of moral licensing, in which households felt that their excessive electricity consumption was justified by their limited water consumption.
If we only judge ourselves by the metric of “good enough”, then we will never make progress. It is critical that we confront this complacency that is easy to fall into. To do so, we must reframe how we look at the world. Looking at actions as “bad” or “good” makes it very easy to create a mental tally of how many of each you have accumulated and base your current decisions on your past ones. Instead, try to base your actions on what you want to see. When deciding on whether to recycle or not, instead of thinking about the eco-friendly things you’ve done in the past, remind yourself that you are working towards a world that you would want to live in.
This kind of mindset extends beyond your attitude towards environmental issues. If you’re deciding whether to take a break after doing a single homework assignment, think about how you are working towards a future that you will appreciate. Remember, base your actions on what you want the future to look like, not what you have done in the past.
Citations:
Dodgson, Lindsay. “The Way ‘Good’ People Explain Away Bad Behaviour Is Called ‘Moral Licensing’ — Here’s What It Means.” Business Insider, 23 Nov. 2017, www.businessinsider.com/what-moral-licensing-means-2017-11.
Gholamzadehmir, Maedeh, et al. “Moral Licensing, Moral Cleansing and Pro-environmental Behaviour: The Moderating Role of Pro-environmental Attitudes.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 65, Oct. 2019, p. 101334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101334.
Lin, Jacquelynn. “Moral Licensing: Does Being Good Make Us Bad?” TED Talks, www.ted.com/talks/jacquelynn_lin_moral_licensing_does_being_good_make_us_bad.
Tiefenbeck, Verena, et al. “For Better or for Worse? Empirical Evidence of Moral Licensing in a Behavioral Energy Conservation Campaign.” Energy Policy, vol. 57, June 2013, pp. 160–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.01.021.