Licensing effect
Also known as: Moral licensing, Self-licensing
A good deed now gives us permission to slip up later.
What it means
The tendency for an initial moral, healthy, or virtuous act to license subsequent behavior that is less so, as if the first deed buys credit to be spent on indulgence. Establishing one's good credentials reduces the threat that a later questionable act poses to self-image, so people feel freer to act on temptation or self-interest. It appears across domains — dieting, charitable giving, environmental choices, and prejudice — and can quietly undermine the cumulative impact of good behavior. It matters for designing interventions that do not inadvertently grant permission to backslide.
Examples
Buying 'green' products can lead people to cheat or share less in a later, unrelated task.
The salad at lunch becomes the reason for cake at four and wine at eight — the virtuous choice gets spent rather than banked, so the day nets out worse.
Someone who gives generously to an appeal in the morning feels entitled to walk past the collector in the afternoon, treating the day's goodness as already paid in.
First described in Monin & Miller (2001); Khan & Dhar (2006).