Virtuous Behaviors Sanction Later Sins

People are quick to treat themselves after a good deed or healthy act:

"the 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."

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=license-to-sin


While I think it is already clear that morality relies on feeling ‘good’ about something (but this is not to denigrate it, just to point out it’s mechanism is tied to our emotions ) maybe these findings indicate that the emphasis is more about feeling good about oneself, as opposed to feeling good about any particular action. I.e. it is not at the low level of individual moral choices that the emotional drives work, but at the higher level of our overall self-image, whether we see ourselves as ‘good’ people. Seen in this way, maybe if one boosts one’s self-perception, by for example giving to charity, or making an effort to recycle, then there is temporarily less drive to boost it any further. This ‘I’ve done my bit’ approach is of course insidious, since can lead to a slippery slope of moral abrogation, and it is our actions in all moral spheres that matter.

Are there any possible solutions? If this really is the case  then the most effective one might be to try to make the right actions less ‘special’  but instead consider them basic minimum of what we should do, and hence less  ‘boosting’ individually to our overall image. So for example if green behavior is the exception, then it might lead to excessive moral self-congratulation, whereas if it is the norm, then this effect is limited. Nobody feels particularly good about not having dropped litter, since it is just expected, and such ‘baseline’ attitudes need to be expanded. Of course ‘norms’ rely on society at large, and are slow, and hard, to change. Incidentally this is perhaps another argument against the ‘makes no difference’ response, since even if the action itself (recycling one’s own waste) results in no tangible effects, it has a social effect by serving as an example, and might help change the norms so that eventually enough people act so as to make a difference (and of course arguing against it has an even greater corrosive negative effect, since it also contributes to what the ‘norm’ will be).

But what can the individual do? As suggested in the report self-awareness seems the best candidate to try compensate for the ‘license to sin’ effect. Knowing that we are predisposed to such behavior may make us analyze each future choice that bit more, and by centering our focus on the now and not the past, our self-perception will be perhaps less biased by the good things we’ve done previously.

"You may be able to avoid the pitfall simply by remembering that the feeling of having "earned it" leads down a path of iniquity."
 
Hopefully this will work, since to twist the famous phrase, it seems all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to have done some good before.