The Compensation Effect
Our minds play many tricks on us; one of them is doing the forbidden or the wrong things and enjoying doing them. More often than not, psychology is to blame.
When it comes to unethical behavior, good people don’t tend to go right off the deep end.
Rather, the mind plays tricks on them, pushing them down the slippery slope of questionable behavior.
Why do we tend to do the wrong thing?
Scientific explanation
Dr. Muel Kaptein, Professor of Business Ethics and Integrity Management at the Rotterdam School of Management, has studied this behavior for decades.
One of his latest studies explains this tendency to do the wrong things by The Compensation Effect.
The compensation effect refers to the tendency for people to assume they accumulate moral capital.
We use good deeds to balance out bad deeds, or alternately, we give ourselves breaks from goodness, like a piece of chocolate after a week of salads. This makes people more inclined to do bad things under the guise of “I’m a good person” or “It’s just this one thing.”
A great example of this is a study in which people were observed lying and cheating more after purchasing products that were good for the environment.
Why do we give up building new habits?
When you plan to start a new good habit, and you stop doing it after a few days, that’s when your mind tricks you to take a break from doing the right thing.
It tells that you’ve been doing great for the last few days, and you definitely deserve compensation now. You’re not a robot, after all.
Unfortunately, once the chain is broken, it’s hard to get back to that habit again because you’ll feel incapable of keeping a habit, and you’ll start blaming yourself for it. And you enter in a negative mindset loop.
What can you do to prevent this?
The good news is that we can fight back this behavior, and we can trick our minds easily to go back to our positive mindset.
What you need to do when you give up building your new habit is to take a few minutes ( or hours ) and think.
Take a notebook or use any of your favorite note-taking apps and write down all your thoughts.
You’ll find yourself questioning your behavior. Ask yourself what does really matters to you? Do you really want to give up building that habit? What will you gain from it if you build it? And what will you lose if you don’t? What are your priorities now?
When you take your time thinking and writing your thoughts, you’ll be more aware of what matters to you the most, and you’ll get back control over your behavior.
