The study suggests that people with ample moral self-worth in one aspect of their lives can slip into immorality or opposite behavior in other areas — their abundant self-esteem somehow pushing them to balance out all that goodness…

Other studies have shown the moral-cleansing effect, but this new Northwestern model shows that the cleansing also has to do with restoring an ideal level of moral self-worth. In other words, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.

“If people feel too moral,” Sachdeva said, “they might not have sufficient incentive to engage in moral action because of the costliness of being good.”