Right Attitudes

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Psychology

A Real Lesson from the Downfall of Theranos: Silo Mentality

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The extraordinary rise and fall of Theranos, Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud, makes an excellent case study on what happens when teams don’t loop each other in.

Theranos’ blood-testing device never worked as glorified by its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. She created an illusion that became one of the greatest start-up stories. She kept her contraption’s malfunctions and her company’s problems shockingly well hidden—even from her distinguished board of directors.

At the core of Holmes’s sham was how she controlled the company’s flow of information

Holmes and her associate (and then-lover) Sunny Balwani operated a culture of fear and intimidation at Theranos. They went to such lengths as hiring superstar lawyers to intimidate and silence employees and anyone else who dared to challenge their methods or expose their devices’ deficiencies.

Holmes had the charade going for so long by keeping a tight rein on who talked to whom. She controlled the flow of information within the company. Not only that, she swiftly fired people who dared to question her approach. She also forcefully imposed non-disclosure agreements even for those exiting the company.

In other words, Holmes went to incredible lengths to create and maintain a silo mentality in her startup. Her intention was to wield much power, prevent employees from talking to each other, and perpetuate her deceit.

A recipe for disaster at Theranos: Silo mentality and intimidation approach

'Bad Blood' by John Carreyrou (ISBN 152473165X) Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018; my summary) is full of stories of how Holmes went out of her way to restrain employees from conferring about what they were working on. Even if they worked on the same project, Holmes made siloed functional teams report to her directly. She would edit progress reports before redirecting problems to other team heads.

Consider designer Ed Ku’s mechatronics team responsible for designing all the intricate mechanisms that control the measured flow of biochemical fluids. Some of his team’s widgets were overheating, impinging on one another and cross-contaminating the clinical fluids. Holmes wouldn’t allow Ku and his team to talk to the teams that improved the biochemical processes.

Silo mentality can become very problematic when communication channels become too constricted and organizational processes too bureaucratic. Creativity gets stifled, collaboration limited, mistakes—misdeeds in the case of Theranos—suppressed, and collective objectives misaligned.

Idea for Impact: Functional silos make organizations slow, bureaucratic, and complicated

Innovation hinges increasingly on interdisciplinary cooperation. Examine if your leadership attitude or culture is unintentionally contributing to insufficient accountability, inadequate information-sharing, and limited collaboration between departments—especially on enterprise-wide initiatives.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Let’s Hope She Gets Thrown in the Pokey
  2. The Dramatic Fall of Theranos & Elizabeth Holmes // Book Summary of John Carreyrou’s ‘Bad Blood’
  3. You Need to Stop Turning Warren Buffett Into a Prophet
  4. Your Product May Be Excellent, But Is There A Market For It?
  5. When Work Becomes a Metric, Metrics Risk Becoming the Work: A Case Study of the Stakhanovite Movement

Lessons from Drucker: Manage People, Not Things

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One of Peter Drucker’s big ideas was the notion of management as a “liberal art.” In The New Realities (1950,) Drucker argued that effective managers need a wide-ranging knowledge on subjects as varied as psychology, science—even religion.

Management is a liberal art—“liberal” because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; “art” because it deals with practice and application.

Lessons from Drucker: Management is a Liberal Art Management deals with people, their values, their growth and development—and this makes it a humanity. So does its concern with, and impact on, social structure and the community. Indeed… management is deeply involved in spiritual concerns—the nature of man, good and evil.

Managers draw on all the knowledge and insights of the humanities and the social sciences—on psychology and philosophy, on economics and on history, on the physical sciences and on ethics.

Idea for Impact: Management has become more about numbers and processes than about people

Manage people, not things.

A wise manager is a well-rounded one—somebody who understands and can leverage, in Drucker’s words, “the nature of man.”

Understand your employees. Understand how they think and act. Know what makes them tick—what drives them, what motivates them, what their aspirations are. Acquaint yourself to different approaches to management based on different sets of values. Individualize your management approach.

Use this understanding to create a productive work environment—that’s your foremost responsibility as a manager.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  2. Four Telltale Signs of an Unhappy Employee
  3. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  4. Leaders Need to Be Strong and Avoid Instilling Fear
  5. Don’t Push Employees to Change

Power Inspires Hypocrisy

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Mark Hurd, whom I featured in Friday’s article, was one of the most respected and eminent leaders in Silicon Valley until his mighty fall following his dalliance with a contractor during his time as CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP.)

Hurd had hired this contractor, a glamour model, as a “hostess” for “executive summit events,” even at out-of-town places where there is no HP event, but Hurd happened to be.

Hurd was ultimately exonerated of violating HP’s sexual-harassment policy (nothing was consummated with the contractor, and Hurd settled with the accuser for undisclosed terms) but he was officially charged with drumming up expense reports.

Hurd walked away from HP with a $34 million severance package. Almost immediately, he became co-president of Oracle, earning $11 million a year and options.

Much has been speculated about the real reasons HP’s board gave Hurd the boot, especially considering that he probably falsified his just an expense report just the once. Even then, said expenses were petty compared to the massive turnaround he had engineered at HP after walking into a very troubling situation. Hurd was famed for his no-nonsense management style and for finagling a culture of operational excellence at HP.

When the Hurd controversy broke out, Wall Street Journal’s Jonah Lehrer argued that when nice people rise to positions of power, “authority atrophies the very talents that got them there.”

The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude.

Contrary to the notion that nice guys finish last, research shows that the surest way to accumulate power is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But once nice guys reach the top, the headiness of wielding power causes them to morph into a very different kind of beast. They lose their ability to empathize with others, especially lesser mortals, and ignore information that doesn’t confirm what they already believe. Most tellingly, perhaps, they learn to excuse faults in themselves that they are quick to condemn in others. That’s not to say that every CEO is a secret villain. But even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

Idea for Impact: Power can become an enabler of corruption, deceit, and hypocrisy. People in positions of power have incentives to hold others to strict account for their behaviors even as they themselves act up, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible
  2. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  3. The Enron Scandal: A Lesson on Motivated Blindness
  4. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  5. Look, Here’s the Deal: Your Insecurity is Masquerading as Authority

The Costs of Perfectionism: A Case Study of A Two Michelin-Starred French Chef

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Marc Veyrat, a top-rated French chef, sued the Michelin Guide in 2019 for downgrading his world-renowned restaurant in the French Alps from three to two stars. Just the previous year, Michelin had awarded Veyrat the highest ranking. That achievement had marked his comeback after he had given up cooking for several years following a skiing accident and a 2015 fire at his restaurant.

Just Excellent …

In an infamous court case, now known as ‘Cheddargate,’ Veyrat speculated he was downgraded after an “incompetent” Michelin inspector with an unrefined palate mistook the ingredients.

Veyrat claimed the anonymous inspector thought Veyrat had used English Cheddar in place of French Reblochon, Beaufort, and Tomme cheese in one of his signature soufflé dishes. “I put saffron in it, and the gentleman who came thought it was cheddar because it was yellow,” Veyrat contended.

“It’s worse than a wound. It’s profoundly offensive. It’s worse than the loss of my parents, worse than anything. It gave me a depression.”

Michelin’s review had commended Veyrat for being “true to his reputation” and described his cuisine as a “pastoral symphony” that blends “woodland fragrances and Alpine herbs.” But Veyrat would have nothing less than three stars.

… Not Exceptional

At the court hearing, Veyrat demanded a symbolic €1 in damages. He asked for proof that the Michelin inspectors had even dined at his restaurant. He demanded to see their judging notes and clarify how they had come to their decisions. (The Michelin Guide’s evaluation criteria are perhaps the biggest trade secrets in the restaurant business.)

In reply, Michelin denied the Cheddar-related allegations and accused Veyrat of acting like a “narcissistic diva” suffering from “pathological egotism.”

Veyrat lost the court case.

Nobody Likes Rejection, Certainly Not a Perfectionist

Veyrat’s wounded pride is understandable. The Michelin Guide is arguably the world’s foremost arbiter of haute cuisine. Many chefs base their entire identity on getting three Michelin stars, the ultimate culinary accolade, and, in so doing, self-inflict extreme pressure to be labeled “exceptional.”

The Michelin Guide is not without controversies. Michelin stars can bring significant prestige, but also intense pressure on chefs. The unrelenting psychological stress and the financial demands of producing ever more creative dishes have even led a few chefs to suicide. Over the last decade, several renowned chefs have also requested Michelin to revoke their stars and opted out of the system in a quest for better work-life balance.

In 2019, South Korean chef Eo Yun-gwon sued Michelin for including his restaurant in the Michelin Guide after he’d told them not to. He declared, “The Michelin Guide is a cruel system. It’s the cruelest test in the world. It forces the chefs to work around a year waiting for a test [and] they don’t know when it’s coming.” Some chefs closed their restaurants and launched lower-key eateries that still cater to discerning epicures.

Idea for Impact: Challenge the Perfectionist, “All-or-Nothing” Thinking

This Marc Veyrat-Michelin Guide episode is yet another reminder that being a perfectionist—and insisting on excellence at all costs—has a dark side. Perfectionism can cause adverse outcomes such as excessive procrastination, low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety.

Perfectionists tend to engage in “all-or-nothing thinking”—that they are either perfect or worthless. In reality, most of us operate on the continuum between these two extremes. We’re neither perfect nor worthless, just “good enough.”

If you’re struggling with perfectionism, it’s crucial to take in the concept of being and doing “good enough.”

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
  3. Don’t Over-Deliver
  4. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  5. How to … Rethink Work-Life Balance

The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!

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Even Petty Power Corrupts: Authority Can Warp Behavior

The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego! Ever wonder why some folks with a little authority, but not much real status, tend to throw their weight around? They often become overconfident, controlling, and bossy. This phenomenon, known as “hubris syndrome,” can lead to micromanaging, unnecessary rules, and a real disconnect from the people around them.

Even in lower-level jobs, you can see these power trips in action. For instance, rub a TSA agent the wrong way, and you might get flagged for extra screening. Summer pool guards can be overly strict with kids and parents who don’t show them the proper respect. In bureaucratic offices, clerks and supervisors frequently impose petty rules just to flex their authority.

These power trippers rely on control to boost their fragile egos. Power tends to amplify self-importance, making people more likely to act in a domineering way—something we often sum up with, “power corrupts” or the “authority bias.

Power Increases People’s Sense of Entitlement

This anecdotal observation is backed by a study titled “The Destructive Nature of Power Without Status.” The researchers argue that neither power nor low status alone leads people to mistreat others; it’s the combination of the two that increases the likelihood of abuse.

We predicted that when people have a role that gives them power but lacks status—and the respect that comes with that status—then it can lead to demeaning behaviors. Put simply, it feels bad to be in a low-status position and the power that goes with that role gives them a way to take action on those negative feelings.

One way to prevent these toxic power dynamics is to ensure that everyone feels respected and valued, regardless of their role. According to the study, “respect assuages negative feelings about low-status roles and encourages positive interactions with others.” In other words, courtesy pays off!

Notes

  • Some people despise anyone they suspect is trying to pull the strings or exert power over them.
  • Consider the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, where a group of students was assigned roles as either prisoners or guards in a simulated prison. Despite knowing they were part of an experiment, the “guards” subjected the “prisoners” to humiliating treatment. According to the researchers, this behavior stemmed from the guards’ desire for respect and admiration, which they felt was lacking in their interactions with others. This controversial experiment was later depicted in a 2015 docudrama.
  • This concept can be compared to the Napoleon Complex, where shorter men may overcompensate for their height through social aggressiveness, despite the fact that Napoleon himself was not actually short.
  • Cf. The “Waiter Rule” states that how you treat seemingly insignificant people says a lot about your personality and priorities.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible
  2. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  3. Power Inspires Hypocrisy
  4. Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion
  5. Is Showing up Late to a Meeting a Sign of Power?

Why People under Pressure Choose Self-Interested Behaviors

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Pressure can put people in a state of threat. As I’ve examined previously here, here, and here, pressure can undermine people’s ability to make sound decisions.

Under pressure, people can abandon their inhibitions, cut corners, and loosen up their moral standards. In other words, they are more likely to engage in self-centered behaviors as opposed to pursuing the common good.

People adopt moral standards that dissuade them from unacceptable behaviors. Under normal circumstances, they think sensibly about the costs and benefits when making decisions. However, under pressure, people can be depleted of the cognitive resources they need to act ethically and resist temptations. See my article on the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower.

When people are in that state of emotional and psychological anxiety, the brain goes into a defensive mode. With that, they are more likely to engage in self-interested behaviors that they would otherwise avoid, especially if the payoff for such behavior is high, and the odds of getting caught and punished are low.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Moral Disengagement Leads People to Act Immorally and Justify Their Unprincipled Behavior
  2. How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235
  3. How to … Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs
  4. What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress
  5. Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)

How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence

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Reciprocity, as described below, is a manipulative technique. My aim for this article is twofold: firstly, it sensitizes you to one of the many things people can do to get you to do their bidding. Secondly, reciprocity is a handy technique for those circumstances where certain ends can justify certain means.

Reciprocity is treating other people as they treat you, or for the purpose of this article, as you wish to be treated—specifically with the expectation that they will reciprocate your favor in the future.

In other words, reciprocity is a sneaky trick that permits deliberate interpersonal influence. Do something for other people and they will be willing to do something for you, partly because they’ll be uncomfortable feeling indebted to you.

The concept of reciprocity is ingrained in human nature. As part of our upbringing, we are taught to give something back to people who give us something. Reciprocity and cooperation are the underpinnings of a civilized society—they allow us to help people who need it and to hope that they will help us when we need it. Research suggests that the desire to repay goodwill is hard-wired in the human brain.

Jack Schafer’s The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over (2015) offers a clever technique to put reciprocity into action:

The next time someone thanks you for something, don’t say, “You’re welcome.” Instead, say, “I know you’d do the same thing for me.” This response invokes reciprocity. The other person is now predisposed to help you when you ask them for a favor.

The effects of goodwill are short-lived. A long-forgotten reputation for helpfulness gets you nothing. You have to renew your reputation by helping others regularly.

To learn more about reciprocity, read social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984.) He identified reciprocity as one of six principles that can help get others’ compliance to your requests.

Wondering what to read next?

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  4. Undertake Not What You Cannot Perform
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The Dramatic Fall of Theranos & Elizabeth Holmes // Book Summary of John Carreyrou’s ‘Bad Blood’

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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018) is Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou’s remarkable exposé on Theranos, the former high-flying Silicon Valley tech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes.

Theranos formally dissolved last week after a high-profile scandal revealed that the company not only deceived investors, but also risked the health of thousands of patients.

A Gripping Narrative, A Charismatic CEO, and A Big Fraud

In 2015, Theranos was one of Silicon Valley’s superstars. Valued at some $9 billion, Theranos claimed an out-and-out disruption of the $73-billion-a-year blood testing industry. Elizabeth Holmes pitched a revolutionary technology that could perform multiple tests on a few drops of capillary blood drawn by a minimally invasive finger prick, instead of the conventional—and much dreaded—venipuncture needle method.

The Story of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes received much adulation by the media Theranos has its origins in 2004, when the brilliant Holmes, then a 19-year old Stanford sophomore, dropped out of college to start the company. Her missionary narrative swayed just about everyone to believe in the potential she touted.

Over the years, Theranos attracted a $1 billion investment, an illustrious board of directors, influential business partners (Walgreens, Safeway, Cleveland Clinic,) and significant amounts of adulation by the media—all of this lent credence to Holmes’s undertaking. She was celebrated as the youngest, self-made female billionaire in the world.

Nobody Asked the Hard Questions

Theranos’s castle in the air started to crumble in October 2015, when Carreyrou’s first Wall Street Journal article reported that the company was embellishing the potential of Theranos’s technology. Based on past employees’ disclosures, the article also cast serious doubts on the reliability of Theranos’s science. Behind the scenes, Theranos performed a majority of its blood tests with commercial analyzers purchased from other companies.

The persistent question in Carreyrou’s Bad Blood is how the many smart people who funded, endorsed, defended, and wrote about this company never set aside their confidence in Holmes’s persuasions and looked beyond her claim of “30 tests from one drop of blood.”

Without much independent due diligence, Theranos’s supporters possibly assumed that everyone else had checked out the company, its founders, and its science. Theranos got away with its actions for as long as it did because no one could conceive of the idea that the business would simply lie as much as it did.

The Story of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes Appeared so Promising That Everybody Wanted it to Be True

Bad Blood also draws attention to Silicon Valley’s many failings, including the cult of the celebrity founder. Holmes’s smoke and mirrors was enabled by the notion of a “stealth mode” in which many Silicon Valley startups operate to protect their intellectual property. Theranos never proved that its testing technology really worked. It was performing tests on patients without having published peer-reviewed studies, getting FDA certification, or carrying out external evaluation by medical experts.

'Bad Blood' by John Carreyrou (ISBN 152473165X) Carreyrou acknowledges that Holmes’s initial intentions were honorable, even if naïve. What triggered Holmes’s downfall was the characteristic entrepreneurial “fake it till you make it” ethos—it inhibited her from conceding early on that her ambitions were simply not viable.

When things didn’t go as intended, Holmes exploited the power of storytelling to get everyone to buy into her tales. She continued to believe that the reality of the technology would catch up with her vision in the future. Trapped in a web of hyperbole and overpromises, Holmes and her associate (as well as then-lover) Sunny Balwani operated a culture of fear and intimidation at Theranos. They went as far as hiring superstar lawyers to threaten and silence employees and anyone else who dared to challenge the company or expose its deficiencies.

Book Recommendation: Bad Blood is a Must-Read

Every inventor, entrepreneur, investor, and businessperson should read Bad Blood. It’s a fascinating and meticulously researched report of personal and corporate ambition unraveled by dishonesty. This page-turner is a New York Times bestseller and is expected to be made into a movie.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Let’s Hope She Gets Thrown in the Pokey
  2. A Real Lesson from the Downfall of Theranos: Silo Mentality
  3. What Appears Self-Evident to One May Be Entirely Opaque to Another: How the Dalai Lama Apology Highlights Cultural Relativism
  4. You Need to Stop Turning Warren Buffett Into a Prophet
  5. Elon Musk Insults, Michael O’Leary Sells: Ryanair Knows Cheap-Fare Psychology

Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible

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Picture of Statue of Demon Mahishasura atop Chamundi Hills in Mysore, India The recent sexual misconduct allegations of influential men abusing their towering positions for contemptuous behaviors provide yet another reminder that power corrupts. As the British politician and historian Lord John Dalberg-Acton famously wrote in an 1887 letter to the Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton,

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which … the end learns to justify the means.

The recent scandals lay bare the three distinctive characteristics of the intoxication of power: the inflation of the self, the devaluation of the helpless, and a dreadful shortfall in self-awareness of actions and consequences.

In the case of studio executive Harvey Weinstein, the worse outrage is that, many prominent people, despite their awareness of Weinstein’s uninhibited abuse, stayed silent—and possibly benefited. Some Hollywood celebrities are said to have overlooked his transgressions. Meryl Streep, one of Hollywood’s most successful actors, who once referred to Weinstein as ‘God,’ had to contend the blame that everyone in Hollywood knew of Weinstein’s conduct. His staff sheltered him or paid off victims, many of whom chose to remain silent for fear of derailing their budding careers. Going public would have hurt them more than it would have damaged Weinstein, until those accusations reach a critical mass and suddenly everyone flipped against him.

The Intoxication of Power

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell first wrote about the “intoxication of power” in A History of Western Philosophy (1945,) and best described what develops in the minds of many people who, in all walks of life, exercise a measure of power and dominance.

The Greeks, with their dread of hubris and their belief in a Necessity or Fate superior even to Zeus, carefully avoided what would have seemed to them insolence towards the universe. The Middle Ages carried submission much further: humility towards God was a Christian’s first duty. Initiative was cramped by this attitude, and great originality was scarcely possible. The Renaissance restored human pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and disaster. … Man, formerly too humble, begins to think of himself as almost a God.

…

In all of this I feel a great danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness—the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.

Idea for Impact: People with even the smallest amount of authority can and will find ways to abuse it

People can become corrupt with power, fame, wealth, and influence, and, as I’ve written previously, they regularly get away with it. The solution, I believe, is to subject our elites (and the sycophantic supporters who are disposed to collude in self-interest) to as many restrictions, supervisions, and checks and balances as possible, and scrutinize them closely so as to spot hubristic traits and symptoms of the abuse of power.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Power Inspires Hypocrisy
  2. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  3. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  4. Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion
  5. Look, Here’s the Deal: Your Insecurity is Masquerading as Authority

Moral Self-Licensing: Do Good Deeds Make People Act Bad?

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When People Do Something ‘Good’ They Feel Licensed to Do Something ‘Bad’ Later

Being—and being seen—as moral, ethical, and principled is an important part of people’s self-concept.

Social psychologists have studied the tendency of people using their prior moral actions to license future morally questionable actions. According to these studies, prior to making morally important decisions, people may survey their previous moral actions. If they recollect engaging in virtuous moral behavior in the past, they may subsequently become less bothered about engaging in morally questionable behavior.

Prior Actions Can Affect Individuals’ Future Behavior

Past good deeds can license people to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, if not problematic—behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling or appearing immoral. The deep-seated human tendency that makes people feel entitled to do something less moral because they’ve done something moral previously is called “moral self-licensing.”

Psychologists reason that people’s previous actions may cause them to feel more self-possessed in their own moral self-worth. As a result, this claim licenses their choice of a more self-indulgent moral choice.

Conversely, when people appear immoral or devious to others, they subsequently take up positive actions to restore their moral image. Psychologists identify this as “compensation or cleansing.”

When ‘Good’ Behavior Supposedly Counteracts Doing Something ‘Bad’

Moral self-licensing has been demonstrated in several realms of human judgment. However, in my opinion, much of the cause-and-effect narratives seem ambiguous. For instance,

  • In a set of pioneering studies, participants who established their racial non-prejudiced attitudes by endorsing President Obama or through selecting a black person for a consulting firm job were subsequently more likely to make pro-white decisions.
  • In one test, after subjects were given a chance to condemn sexist statements, they were found to be subsequently more likely to support hiring a man in a male-dominated profession.
  • One study on consumer behavior suggested that shoppers who brought their own bags felt licensed to buy more junk food.

Contribution Ethic and “Prospective Moral Licensing”

A phenomenon related to moral self-licensing is “contribution ethic” or the “moral credential effect.” When people feel they’ve done their fair share for some noble cause, they decide they need do no more. In one study, after people participated in a pro-social deeds (e.g., doing something good for the cause of the environment,) they felt licensed to behave more selfishly later (e.g., donating less to an environmental program). Another study showed that people who drive hybrid cars tend to get more tickets and cause more accidents than do drivers of conventional cars.

Some studies have suggested that just thinking about past moral behavior or writing about oneself as a moral person can decrease the likelihood of subsequently performing altruistic acts—such as decreasing contributions to charitable causes or being less engaging in cooperative behavior towards friends and colleagues.

Finally, simply planning to do good later can allow people to be bad now. Some studies suggest that when people merely plan to engage in a moral behavior in the future, they feel licensed to respond in a morally questionable way in the present. Psychologists identify this as “prospective moral licensing.”

Idea for Impact: Past Moral Deeds Could Make People Do Morally Wrong Things

Part of becoming wise to the ways of the world and getting along with people is understanding the many peculiarities of human behavior. Learning why people feel licensed to engage in potentially immoral behavior given their demonstrated moral behavior allows for a better understanding of the world in which we live.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  2. Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible
  3. Power Inspires Hypocrisy
  4. Look, Here’s the Deal: Your Insecurity is Masquerading as Authority
  5. Unreliable Narrators Make a Story Sounds Too Neat