[1][2][3][4][5][6] In simple terms, self-licensing occurs when people allow themselves to indulge after doing something positive first; for example, drinking a diet soda with a greasy hamburger and fries can lead one to subconsciously discount the negative attributes of the meal's high caloric and cholesterol content.
[8] Self-licensing can have negative societal consequences since it has a permissive effect on behaviors such as racial prejudice and discrimination, selfishness, poor dietary and health habits, and excessive energy consumption.
[8] In research that draws on social identity theory, it was also found that group membership moderates the effectiveness of moral credentials in mitigating perceptions of prejudice.
[12] Research suggests that self-licensing affects moral self-regulation and individual behavior in a variety of contexts; for example, it can influence consumer purchases, political opinions, charitable giving, energy policy and home energy use, job hiring, racial attitudes, health-related decision-making, risky sexual behavior, alcohol consumption, and dietary supplement use.
[3][7][13][14][15][16][17] Washington Post staff writer Michael Rosenwald described the following everyday examples of self-licensing behavior: We drink Diet Coke – with Quarter Pounders and fries at McDonald's.
"[18]: 1343 A 2011 study published by researchers in Taiwan indicated that people who take multivitamin pills, especially those who believe that they are receiving significant health benefits from supplement use, are more prone to subsequently engage in unhealthy activities.
Survey results showed that participants who thought that they had received a multivitamin were predisposed to smoking more cigarettes and more likely to believe that they were invulnerable to harm, injury, and disease as compared with subjects who knew that they were given a placebo.
Participants who believed they were given a multivitamin were also less likely to exercise and to choose healthier food, and had a higher desire to engage in "hedonic activities that involve instant gratification but pose long-term health hazards", such as casual sex, sunbathing, wild parties, and excessive drinking.
It's a chilling thought, but ideas aren't without impact, and every time we humour a harmless myth – that vitamin pills are healthy, that some fashionable berry prevents cancer – we might be doing more harm than we think.
Due to the self-licensing effect, "a prior intent to be virtuous boosts respondents' self-concepts, thus reducing negative self-attributions associated with the purchase of relative luxuries".
[21] Researchers have invoked the self-licensing effect to explain why consumers who opt for energy-efficient products increase their energy usage so as to offset any potential gains.
Energy economist Lucas Davis published a study showing that after getting high-efficiency washers, consumers increased clothes washing by nearly 6 percent.
[5] Subsequent research by Monin and Daniel Effron, using subjects paid in candy or cash and excluding those who preferred Republican presidential candidates in the 2004 or 2008 election, showed that the opportunity to endorse Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election made those who did so more likely to express preferences favoring whites over blacks in hypothetical situations, such as hiring a police chief for a department experiencing racial tension.