Latest revision as of 01:44, 10 December 2025

In the world of charity and altruism, two things that are already vulnerable to misuse, inefficiency, and constant backfiring, one of the most pernicious issues is the one of Moral Licensing. Moral Licensing refers to the phenomenon when an individual does some sort of ethical action, such as donating to a charity, or buying a more eco-friendly product, then feeling either justified or not guilty in engaging in other unethical behavior, effectively offsetting the good done. It's a very effective way of making us feel less bad about things we know we ought to not do, to fight the resulting cognitive dissonance.

In other words, it's the issue of treating morality like a currency; Keeping track of how many "ethical points" you have and using them to spend on unethical actions, sort of like the idea of karma. For example, someone who donates to a tree planting charity will feel justified in taking a 500 mile road trip in a gas guzzler since they (believe they) have helped reduce CO2, or a person volunteering at a local pet shelter won't feel the need to do anything about their meat consumption since they already have helped animals.

Besides the obvious issues with how this negates any potential good, human beings are exceptional at overestimating and underestimating respectively the effects of their actions both positive and negative when there is no direct evidence of the good or bad they've done, meaning that when they partake in the unethical behavior afterwards, it often does much more harm which not only negates the good they've done, but is often destructive enough to add additional harm. This makes them not even at absolute zero, but in the red.

High effort put into the good actions, even if the good actions are low-impact, often helps cloud this judgement. Spending a lot of time volunteering, or donating a relatively large sum to charity, feels like you have done so much, that driving more or eating steak and eggs seems like it barely, if at all, negates the good you did. Given how the vast majority of ethical actions are very low impact or worse, such as emotional actions undertaken under the veil of altruism (like giving a homeless person money, or giving video games to sick kids), this makes the near-zero positive impact very easily overturned by everyday actions (excessive driving, meat-eating). But even low-effort actions like signing an online petition or using a browser extension that raises a few cents for charity tends to give people significantly more mental leeway than is warranted.

This sort of thing of course is not always a guarantee. Some people recognize that doing good doesn't make it permissible to engage in harmful behavior, and the whole point should be minimizing harm while maximizing good. But given human beings irrationality and constant self-serving bias, this is comparatively rare. While it is very hard to turn your impact on the world from negative to a positive, with enough time and effort, this can certainly be achieved.

It's not charities in and of themselves that are a problem, it's people's relationship with them.

Within Veganism

In terms of effort to reward ratio, Veganism is by far the most effective action that can be taken to reduce one's harm footprint. Thousands of animal lives spared from months to years of suffering, tons of greenhouse gases not emitted, and some bonus such as reduced waste and costs to healthcare infrastructure.

However, even though vegans have much smaller harm footprints than average, at the end of it all, Vegans are still human beings, prone to biases and errors in judgement. It's nice to think that Vegans on average are more conscientious of the consequences of their actions. They've made the effort to do the ethical thing of not harming animals, so they would probably be more introspective and want to reduce their harm overall, not use the harm they've avoided to justify other questionable actions, right?

Unfortunately, there have not been many studies specifically about this sort of thing, but based on what we do know we can make some educated guesses. For starters, we can look at how Vegans and Vegetarians map in regards to some of the metrics on the the Big Five personality traits model, AKA OCEAN (An actual psychological model based on empirical evidence, not some pop-psych nonsense like Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram). One of the personality traits in the model is Conscentiousness, which measures, among other things, an individual's discipline and self-control. According to a meta-analysis of nearly 70,000 people, Vegans and Vegetarians do not score meaningfully higher than average in this metric (though they did score higher in the traits of Agreeableness and Openness, unsurprisingly).^[1]

Given how the average person is generally not very conscientious given how common overly-indulgent lifestyles are, this does raise questions about whether a Vegan would be guilty of indulging excessively. One could argue that going Vegan takes a lot of discipline and self-control but this is not necessarily the case, especially for wealthier vegans who can afford tons of mock meats and dining out several times a week, a group arguably more likely to be wasteful.

But even if a Vegan does engage in more destructive behavior, does that necessarily make their carbon footprint larger than average? Probably not. Given how Veganism alone saves over one ton of greenhouse gas emissions annually, and how overly indulgent the average person's lifestyle already is, a vegan would have to do a lot more to make up for the difference. The average Westerner drives big gas cars, takes hot showers daily, regularly flies away on vacations, and donates little to nothing to a charity that would offset any emissions (if they do, it'd be to an ineffective charity anyway and the licensing effect would kick in).

But it's not necessarily that a Vegan would be more wasteful elsewhere. The big concern as far as licensing goes comes when a person who is Vegan doesn't feel the need to do much beyond that. A vegan who drives thousands of miles in a hummer, takes hot showers daily, doesn't donate to animal charities, and cranks up the AC compared to a conscientious meat-eater who mainly consumes poultry, bikes to work, donates a few hundred bucks to effective climate charities, and tries to reduce generally? Certainly.

While effective animal charities can be a great way to increase your positive impact for the animals, given the huge environmental footprint of animal products, donating to for example a charity that focuses on outreach and replaces non-Vegan meals, that can serve as a great way to help offset the harm of your overall carbon footprint that is necessary to maintain a decent quality of life (though you don't necessarily get all the credit for it; See Virtue Theft).

How to Reduce it

Moral Licensing is a psychological phenomenon, therefore eliminating it entirely would require altering how human minds operate. But, as mentioned earlier, this sort of thing is not an inevitability, and there are ways of minimizing it. We might not be immune to how our brains work, but we can do something about how we react to these biases. This section will go over ways for not only reducing this effect in yourself but also in others, since this is something that will need to be dealt with in activism.

For starters, don't view good deeds as gaining points or "karma." Always keep in mind, you are doing good things such as eating vegan and donating to charity in order to do the most good. You might need to do some action that requires harm or is an opportunity cost, such as taking a plane trip for business, or not donating some money to buy something for your house. The way to view this is not "Well, I'm vegan and I donate thousands of dollars a year to charity. I'm still in the green. This is fine to do." It should be more along the lines of "I'm doing this as a necessity, which causes harm/isn't the most effective use of resources. I need to make up for this by doing more good to make up for the cost." This might come in the form of giving a little extra money for your next donation, or convincing one more person to reduce consumption of animal products. There's a huge difference between trying to make up for harm being done, and feeling comfortable with the harm because of a good action.

Also, keep in mind the social effects of potentially hypocritical behavior, especially when it comes to justifying it. If you go vegan for environmental reasons, but go for joyrides in a Hummer because you have lowered your carbon footprint, people will be less likely to take your arguments and positions very seriously. They'll see someone who thinks they don't need to take anything else very seriously because you're already great for being Vegan. This in turn will negatively impact your ability to be a representative for the movement, which will hurt more animals and the environment. Even if this has the opposite effect, it might make people go "Man, being Vegan reduces your carbon footprint enough that driving a lot doesn't even come close? Sign me up!" which will then make THEM vulnerable to the liscensing effect. This is arguably already a problem.

References

1. ↑ https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-intriguing-connections-between-personality-and-dietary-lifestyles/