An interesting article came to my attention this week.  It described studies showing that people who brought their own shopping bags to the grocery store purchased both more environmentally friendly products, but also more unhealthy items, such as potato chips.  Say what?  Helping the environment leads us to eat more ice cream?  With further investigation it turns out it is actually not the shopping bags, but the reward we feel we deserve in remembering the shopping bags, that leads us to indulge.  (Being required to bring the bags eliminates the entitled behavior).  This indulging tendency is known as the licensing effect, and can subtly sabotage our good health behaviors.

The licensing effect is a term used in marketing and social psychology to describe the subconscious phenomenon wherein an increase in our self image tends to make us worry less about the consequences of subsequent choices, and therefore increases the likelihood to act in more negative ways.  In other words, people will allow themselves to indulge after doing something positive first. Drink a diet soda – order dessert.  Go for a hike – have a cheeseburger for lunch.  Licensing has a permissive effect and can lead to poor choices and eventually unintended consequences.

Well, I’m thinking, that explains a few things I’ve always wondered about, such as why every time I pay off a large bill I order myself a little something from Amazon.  Or why my husband always has a chicken burrito for lunch the day he weighs himself and is happy to have lost a bit of weight.

According to the change expert BJ Fogg of Stanford, even the most successful among us are starved of feeling successful.  In his research, Fogg found that the feeling generated by success is disproportionately greater than the size of the accomplishment itself.  Using celebrations, then, as positive reinforcement can increase behavior change.  It builds motivation naturally.  In fact, BJ Fogg recommends creating a tiny celebration each time you engage in even a tiny step toward a larger behavior change.  His prescription is to say “I am awesome,”  fist pump, or raise your hands up in victory whenever you engage in a small victory of a step toward your behavior change.  Do a few push ups, tell yourself how great you are.  Floss your teeth, smile in the mirror and give yourself a thumbs up.  Not only do you acknowledge your behavior, but it actually releases chemicals in your brain to reinforce the neural loop of the behavior.

So, in applying this to our grocery bag to potato chip behavior chain, it occurs to me that licensing is a natural response in which we create a reward for the success of remembering our bags.  We are hungry for the feeling of success, not the potato chips (or the new book when I pay off my credit card bill).  Therefore it makes sense that in order to avoid the unintended consequences of “indulging,” we could actively create a reward that will fill the need, such as Fogg’s “celebration.”  If we give ourselves the reward and “atta-girl” feeling, it will bring our attention to our “licensing” attitude and help us avoid the trap.

How about we try out some small celebrations of our own this week?   Let’s see how it feels to add a little touchdown endzone dance when we take out the garbage or decline a piece of cheesecake.  It might just help us to avoid the self sabotage of indulgence and if nothing else, it will make our lives a little more fun!