Great example of the self-identity credit fallacy on one of
my absolute favorite shows – Burn Notice (OK, I was watching a repeat of an
August episode). The spies offered a
bribe to an arms dealer’s COO. He was
offended that they would even ask!! For
the next day or so, he felt very self-righteous and proud of himself for being such as honorable
person. He built up his self-identity
for being honest and loyal. Now, he had
some self-identity credit to burn, which allowed him to accept the bribe the
next day.
This might sound hypocritical, but it is common. Researchers have demonstrated this at
restaurants. The more salads that are on
the menu, the more likely people are to order something less healthful (I think
it was French fries in the study). By
imagining themselves ordering all of these healthy salads, they built up their
self-identity for being healthy, allowing them to spend the credit ordering the
French fries. Note that this did not
actually require ordering the salad, just imaging themselves ordering it.
Another study found this with smoking. Just telling people that you plan to quit
gives you self-identity credit for trying to quit. So you don’t have to try as hard to actually
quit.
I find myself doing this all the time. If I need to do something hard or unpleasant,
I tell everyone how dedicated I am to doing it.
Then, after I have built up sufficient self-identity credit for my
dedication, I can avoid it altogether and still feel good about myself. Of course, nothing ever gets done this
way. But that is why it is “predictably
irrational” (HT to Dan Ariely for the great appellation).
