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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Anyone who has ever devoured a triple-chocolate brownie after an intense workout knows how tempting it can be to indulge after behaving virtuously. A new study suggests, however, that we often apply this thought process to inappropriate scenarios, giving ourselves license to act in unhealthy or antisocial ways.
Researchers in Taiwan gave a sugar pill to 74 smokers, misleading half of them to think it was a vitamin C supplement. All the participants then took an unrelated survey and were told they could smoke if they desired. Those who believed they had taken a vitamin smoked twice as many cigarettes as those who knew they had taken a placebo. According to study co-author Wen-Bin Chiou of National Sun Yat-Sen University, the participants may have felt, consciously or unconsciously, that the healthy activity entitled them to partake, a concept known as the licensing effect.
His study, published in the journal Addiction, is the first to examine the health ramifications of the licensing effect, but others have shown its influence on moral behavior. In 2009 a study found that reminding people of their humanitarian attributes reduced their charitable giving. Last year another experiment showed that when individuals buy ecofriendly products, they are more likely to cheat and steal.
"Sometimes after we behave in line with our goals or standards, it's as if our action has earned ourselves some moral credit," says psychologist Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto, an author of the green products study. "This credit can then subsequently be used to engage in self-indulgent or selfish behaviors without feeling bad about it."
You may be able to avoid the pitfall simply by remembering that the feeling of having "earned it" leads down a path of iniquity.
This article was published in print as "License to Sin."
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10 Comments
Add CommentBecause of the way our society operates, doesn't this hold more true for women than for men? We tell the women, "If you eat that box of chocolate in one setting it's going to make you fat." So they workout like crazy so they can justify eating that box of chocolate or pint of ice cream in one setting and the workout eliminate the guilt feelings of eating too much. It is not easy to make most men feel guilty, so they only take a couple pieces of the chocolate and tell you that it increases their energy level after being depleted from working out; they do not over indulge as much as women or feel as guilty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's wonderful that we can still "discover" human stuff; especially the 500,000 year old ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI used to read SA thirty years ago. Interesting reading back then.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow long has this sort of worthless psycho-babble been allowed to infiltrate its pages?
Even the genuinely scientific articles can be fluffed and slanted; articles like these belong on Yahoo. In fact, the comment section on SA articles nowadays sometimes read like Yahoo comment sections, except the people posting here usually exhibit above-average spelling and syntax skills.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProbably about five years now. It started back when a gay psychiatrist/psychologist, who just happen to have an incredible writing skill, started explaining why some people are gay and why some are not, and telling a little bit about what it is like to be gay in America and he directed his attention toward homosexual men. That made the women feel left out, so this rag felt compelled to become politically correct and give women equal time; you now see the results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know I am going to be called a 'male chauvinistic pig', but the truth is the truth.
I know what you mean. A subject like "science" has its own level of "natural selection." Lots of them pesky words you gotta unnerstan' to even "get in the door."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe they could change the name to Superstitious American!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey need to do something; their editing is really poor too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it weird that you equate virtuousness and self-interested health consciousness. Yes, I know we sometimes view cake as a font of vice, but that's some sort of a metaphor. *Actual* vice is what ethicists study, and it's got basically nothing to do with chocolate and smoking - and so also this study.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this explains why some organizations insist on starting their meetings with prayer. Having thus "proven" their morality, they can then proceed to unethical actions without having to feel guilty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt also seems to me that the potential value to society of a scientific study or article can be estimated by how vigorously the anti-science people attack it.