Revisionist History Ep. 1 The Lady Vanishes

Have you ever eaten a big piece of sweet chocolate fudge cake, telling yourself that it is okay after eating nothing but green veggies for a week? Have you ever increased your energy usage after buying energy-efficient products? If you have such experiences, you have experienced ‘moral licensing’ in your life. ‘Moral licensing’ is a term used to describe the subconscious phenomenon whereby increased confidence and security in one’s self-image or self-concept tends to make that individual worry less about the consequences of subsequent immoral behavior and, therefore, more likely to make immoral choices and act immorally. It can also be referred as “How being good can make you bad” or “Permission to sin”. Simply put, it means that after one has done something good, he/she justifies himself/herself for doing something bad. You open the door to one outsider and it gives you the right to close the door on another.

In the first episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast ‘Revisionist History’, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, Gladwell introduces this concept of ‘moral licensing’ through several historical examples of Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard. In the 19th century, Elizabeth Thompson’s painting ‘Roll Call’ was selected by royal academy exhibition and was hung in eye-level in Gallery 2 (this means that the art is IMPORTANT). She was nearly accepted as the member of the royal academy, but she failed only by two votes. It seemed as a sign that the door was finally opened to the Holy Grail. However, the second picture of Thompson got hung in the lecture room, “the black hole”, and the royal academy passes a rule to restrict women from being elected. “In 1874, I wasn’t elected by two votes, but I knew the door had closed, and wisely.” Thompson gave up.

Moral licensing can be seen everywhere: from diet to sexism and racism. The unbelievable victory of Donald Trump may be one example. ‘The door had been open to an African-American for eight years and now for a woman? Well, that’s just too much.’ ‘I’ve showed equality to diverse ethnicities. So now I can vote for a racist and a sexist.’ This might be an exaggerated interpretation and this probably might not be the case. (At least, I hope so.) However, this sort of justification might have unconsciously happened.  
 

Then, what can we do to prevent this from happening? First solution is to make our unconscious thoughts aware. According to the podcast, when the first Australian women prime-minister Julia Gillard was criticized and depicted as a witch, she gave a famous misogyny speech. By noticing the fact that you’re ‘moral licensing’, you tend to be more cautious. Secondly, it is important to always judge the action you are about to do by your standard that you are trying to stick to than focus on the progress you’ve made. For example, when you want to gobble your chocolate fudge cake, ask yourself whether it is a right thing to do and don’t calculate how much weight you have lost till now and how much calories the cake is.  

What’s wrong it always wrong, regardless of whether you’ve done the right thing previously.