Recent models of ethical decision making suggest that moral awareness is necessary for moral action. We predicted that extended contemplation would increase awareness, which would then increase ethical decisions. Our results indicated just the opposite: greater contemplation led to less ethical decisions. Post-hoc analyses and a followup experiment suggested that decision-makers act as if their previous choices have created or lost moral credentials: after an (un)ethical first choice, people acted significantly less (un)ethically in their subsequent choice. These findings provide the basis for a model of compensatory ethics.