Kan det vara så att människor har en slags moralisk ”idealpunkt”, och om de inte befinner sig i den kan de känna behov av att röra sig i riktning mot den? Kan det förklara varför ”altruistiska” människor kan bete sig omoraliskt och att ”egoistiska” människor kan bete sig moraliskt? Ja, så kan det vara, enligt studien ”Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners: The Paradox of Moral Self-Regulation”, publicerad i Psychological Science:

We propose that moral self-worth is one of the gauges that indicate when moral action is needed. Past work has shown that people’s self-worth is defined to a large extent by how moral they perceive themselves to be (Dunning, 2007). Behaving immorally has a negative influence on perceptions of self-worth, and people engage in moral behavior in order to regain some of that lost worth. This set of compensatory behaviors can be included under a blanket term—moral cleansing, which refers to actions people engage in when their moral self-worth has been threatened. … More recently, it has been shown that people will literally and figuratively cleanse themselves in response to violations of certain moral rules. For example, participants might express an increased desire to donate their organs or to volunteer for an ideological cause after contemplating paying the poor to harvest their organs (Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000), or they might literally disinfect themselves with an antiseptic hand wipe after duplicating an unethical story by hand (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006). Taken together, these results suggest that people monitor their feelings of moral self-worth and use cleansing behaviors to maintain those feelings. If moral cleansing is used as a means to compensate when moral self-worth is below some standard, then compensation might also occur, in the form of amoral or immoral behavior, when moral self-worth is above an ideal level. That is, if people feel ”too moral,” they might not have sufficient incentive to engage in moral action because prosocial behavior is inherently costly to the individual. For example, people might not feel the need to donate blood or volunteer if they have already established their reputation as a moral person. This type of response can be thought of as moral licensing. People may be licensed to refrain from good behavior when they have accrued a surplus of moral currency.

Forskarna finner också experimentellt stöd för sin tes. Intressant, detta, att det kan utgöra en impuls att bete sig omoraliskt, om man känner sig mycket moralisk. Detta gör kanske att man inte kan lita på att de som verkar moraliska kommer att fortsätta vara det. En sak jag undrar är dock vad som händer med personer som upplever sig vara i moralisk ”jämvikt” — fortsätter de bara att bete sig som de redan gör? Vad är det då som kan rubba jämvikten?