Licensing Effect

Self-licensing, sometimes called “moral licensing” or the “licensing effect,” is a social psychological term referring to our tendency to forgive bad behavior if it follows good behavior.

“Bad” and “good,” of course, will be relative to one’s perception of these concepts, though they will typically refer to broadly immoral and moral behaviors. And in both cases these behaviors can be large or small, or a combination of large and small actions that will feel equalized, whatever the scale-imbalance between them.

So exercising and then eating an incredibly unhealthy meal will feel somehow balanced, despite that meal potentially undoing (or more than undoing) all the (good, positive, moral) working-out that was achieved before the (bad, negative, immoral) indulgence in too much sugar and fat and carbs.