Planning to Do Good Tomorrow Gives Us Permission to Be Bad Today

Pacific Standard:

A recent study provided still more evidence of the very human tendency to engage in “moral licensing.” It found people who reported doing a good deed in the morning—and thereby solidified their self-image as admirably virtuous—were more likely to engage in unethical behavior later that day.

While this largely unconscious dynamic is hardly something to be proud of, newly published research suggests it is amazingly easy to set into motion. It finds that merely thinking about performing a socially responsible act—say, by expressing willingness to participate in an upcoming blood drive—gives people implicit permission to engage in one form of hurtful behavior: indulging in normally repressed racist tendencies.

Read the whole story: Pacific Standard