Rational Self-Sabotage: A tale of goal inefficacy
Article commissioned by BreadCrumbs Linguistics — a Behavioural Linguistics firm specialising in nudge-based communication.
Year-round we strive to be better versions of ourselves; to buy less, more ethically, more environmentally friendly, exercise more, eat better, drink less alcohol. The list goes on and we adapt it to our changing contexts — like the number of times we aim to wash our hands in a day, due to the current pandemic.
Staying on course with our moral engagements has to be the hardest part of acting morally. Indeed, it’s not easy to consistently turn our intentions into actions. Even with the best intentions, excuses never run dry and we can always find a way to diverge from our initial objectives.
Wouldn’t life be easy if we could follow through with our intentions? Unfortunately, we aren’t the rational thinkers we think we are. If we were, we would have never experienced the notorious process of “procrastination” — a convenient principle that allows us to export to the future what we intended to do at present — and we would all be much more productive.
This article does not promise to solve irrationality. After all, that makes us human. It offers us partial insight on why it becomes challenging to take up new moral duties such as washing your hands, keeping away from loved ones while exercising and eating healthily for example.
To get there we must start by understanding how the moral compass operates. Our moral-self is the ever-evolving way we perceive ourselves and the way we think others perceive us. This concept of self is what will determine our identity and the way we make decisions and behave.
Behavioural studies have largely demonstrated moral and immoral actions regularly functioning as if on a precise trade balance. This individually regulated balance enables us to act one way or another. To do so, it uses a moral accounting system of actions steered through our moral compass. Placing on one side actions considered “good” and on the other those thought of as “bad”. When an imbalance arises, we feel an adjustment is needed. Hence, levelling our self-concept by compensating.
In 2015, Werle, Wansink, and Payne ran studies in an anonymous northern American university and looked at the way we reward ourselves with food after exercising. They found a considerable difference in the amount of pleasant (usually less healthy) food participants consumed when the effort was considered as exercise compared to as fun. What this means is that because participants felt they had done a “good” thing by exercising, they could justify a “bad” reward like unhealthy food.
Behavioural economists call this compensation process either cleansing or licensing. By cleansing, an individual will act morally to make up for the recent debit of “bad” behaviour. In contrast, licensing will occur when we have a credit of “good” behaviours.
In the above example, presenting exercise as fun makes it so that individuals do not accumulate moral credit for their actions and will reward themselves to less pudding and soft drinks.
This phenomenon is familiar to all and ever since it has been named and studied researchers have been applying it to various domains. We have seen study participants allowing themselves racist actions following their endorsement of President Obama in his election but also an increase in sexist behaviours after choosing to employ a woman.
Going further, researchers also found we allow ourselves to act immorally from a distance or through someone else. In fact, researchers have proven that even recalling a past good deed can license us to act immorally. For example, as we are asked at the till if we would like to donate it has been found that reminiscing of having donated blood, for instance, will diminish our probability of giving at the till.
Secondly, with the same idea, we can excuse ourselves through the anticipation of a “good” deed. I might tell myself I can watch another episode now since I’ll do some work later. Similarly, theory predicts that we can nourish our morality balance through the actions of close ones. Using 425 participants, Dutch university researchers created 4 studies portraying close ones purchasing environmentally friendly and discovered that participants do in fact account moral actions of others for themselves. Consequently, they scored much lower on pro-environment intentions scales than those who did not hear about their relatives. As a wrap, our brains will consider our excuses as valid even when based on past, future, or on others’ accomplishments (given they are close relatives).
It is certainly reassuring to see that our brains do account for morality and that we are prone to act for good. As is often the case in behavioural domains, we end up discovering the specific logic attached to our actions is often irrational. This helps explain why we can usually only do so much of a good thing and why we love to reward ourselves or feel we deserve things. There are here major insights to consider about how others behave, however, in my opinion, the larger lesson is about self-regulation. Indeed, increased consideration towards this phenomenon will amount to good deeds being more efficient, perhaps eating less snacks after exercising to lose weight for example.
