Moral Licensing: Do You Stick to Your Ethics, No Matter the Cost?
A deep dive into some psychological research can help us ensure we run our businesses more consistently and more ethically
You know how when you learn a new word, you suddenly see that word everywhere? Or when you buy a new car, you start to notice that everyone else seems to have the same car? A few years back I became familiar with a psychological term that I now recognize on a regular basis: moral licensing. Moral licensing is a subconscious process, a cognitive bias that allows people to behave immorally without challenging their belief that they are, overall, a moral person.
Bear with me as I dive into psychology (with some snazzy APA-style citations) to help shed some light on this theory. A plethora of studies have found that moral licensing occurs in almost everyone. Monin and Miller (2001) found that people who disagreed with a sexist statement were more likely to then recommend a man for a job. Sachdeva et al. (2009) found that after writing a positive self-reflective story, people donated less money to charity. Khan and Dhar (2006) found that even imagining doing a pro-social task gave people the “okay” to partake in immoral behavior. Cascio and Plant (2015) found that those who planned to donate blood in the near future were more likely to state racist attitudes in the present. They also found that people were more likely to display immoral behavior even if they simply knew they would have an opportunity in the near-future to demonstrate moral behavior (Simbrunner and Schlegelmilch, 2017).
Basically, what these examples show is that by expressing one opinion or by partaking in one action that is deemed “moral”, our subconscious gives us the “license” to be a bit less “moral” in the next task.1 It’s almost like a behavioral ledger being kept deep within our brain, adding one to each side of the morality chart, like debits and credits, ensuring that it all equals out.
In real life, most moral licensing is simple and not that big a deal: “I went for a run this morning, so it’s okay that I’m ordering pizza for dinner.” Or “I vacuumed the entire house, so I’ll leave the dirty dishes for my spouse to wash.” You do one “good” thing, thereby licensing yourself to be a bit less “good.”
Moral licensing also appears in larger, societal scenarios. When McDonald’s first introduced salads to its menu, sales of Big Macs increased significantly. When seat belts were first introduced and eventually mandated, the number of accidents actually increased for a while. And a Baruch College research paper found that just the presence of a low-calorie “healthy” option in a vending machine led people to buy the highest-calorie item more often than if there was no “healthy” option. In each of these scenarios, a change – or even a considered change – in behavior one way led to a change of behavior in the opposite direction. McDonald’s has salads? Great! I’ll get that next time. One Big Mac and a large fries. This strap could keep me alive in a car crash? I can probably go a little faster on the highway then. Hey, management put apples in the vending machine! Snickers bar, please.
These are all a bit entertaining when you get down to it, but moral licensing can be extremely dangerous as well. After Julia Gillard was elected as Australia’s first female prime minister, sexism in the country (and among her opposition in the government) went through the roof. After Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president, studies show that racism and race relations both worsened. Remember the 2008 presidential campaign with Hillary Clinton? I can’t remember a time when there was more sexism on such blatant display, having nothing to do with political ideology.
Okay, you’ve followed me down the psychology rabbit hole, but this has increasing relevance to small business. Every day, we make decisions that have to balance the health of our businesses with our moral beliefs. And since moral licensing is subconscious, we generally don’t know when it occurs.2 Our main job as business owners is to grow our companies, keep them profitable, and take care of our employees. But let’s say you give one employee a deserved bonus, and then ten minutes later another employee asks for time off for a personal issue. Moral licensing says we’re more likely to reject that second employee’s request, because we were already “good” recently. What if you bend a strict rule for one customer, trying to be polite, but then get a similar, unreasonable request from a second customer a few hours later? More than likely, you’ll be treating two identical scenarios very differently.
There are countless times over the years where myself or another member of my family has been forced to make a decision that would either support our ethics or support our business – but not both. These are some of the hardest decisions to make, because of our predisposition to do everything possible to protect our work. One of the ways I’ve worked to improve my own management abilities in the last few years is to be more cognizant of my business ethics and ensure that I don’t end up in a scenario where I may have to compromise them for the safety of the company. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always succeed. But being aware of it is a great first step to try and avoid the pitfalls of moral licensing.
Another way you can avoid them is by refusing to label your behavior or actions as inherently “good” or “bad”. We all know that most of life is full of grays. But our brains have evolved to have a subconscious desire to categorize and classify things into black and white.3 We also have a strong psychological desire to preserve our self-image, so when we make any decision, our subconscious will ask whether or not it jives with that self-image. Instead, regularly reaffirm how your choices meld with your goals, commitments, or morals. For example, if you choose to do something good for an employee, interpret that not as “a good action,” but rather your continuing commitment to do the best you can for every employee. If you decide to have a salad for lunch, interpret that as a confirmation that you are continuously working to be healthier.
By reframing our actions and refusing to categorize everything we do, it will make it much easier to flow through each day’s tough decisions – and frankly, will likely make them easier to make in the first place.
Many of these actions are not necessarily moral or immoral – eating a cheeseburger after working out is neither of the two. But for ease of explanation, I’ll keep using this terminology.
I’ve never met anyone who straight out said, “Obama is president – that means I can be racist!” I assume you haven’t either. But we all know someone who certainly exhibited that trait. Think of someone saying, “It’s okay, I have a Black friend.”
Back in our early days as humans, our classifying-obsessed brains were generally focused on “will this thing eat me or not.” That’s as black and white as it comes.