Morality

Are We More—or Less—Moral Than We Think?

On a particular visit to Canada from the UK my mum declared me to have low moral standards! Gosh what had I done you may well ask? Before you let your imaginations run wild, she actually was in despair that I allowed my children’s bedrooms to accumulate mess and clutter!
Not what a good girl like me had been brought up to encourage!

Ma I think you confused low morality with ‘less than high standards of tidyiness’ oops mea culpa!

However like most people if asked whether I’d steal, like most I would say no. Would I try to save a drowning person? That depends—perhaps on our fear of big waves which in my case is hampered by being a very bad swimmer! Much research has explored the ways we make moral decisions. But in the clinch, when the opportunity arises to do good or bad, how well do our predictions match up with the actions we actually take? [continue reading…]

Image: istockphoto

Image Credit: istockphoto

2009 may well be remembered for its scandal-ridden headlines, from admissions of extramarital affairs by governors and senators, to corporate executives flying private jets while cutting employee benefits, and most recently, to a mysterious early morning car crash in Florida. The past year has been marked by a series of moral transgressions by powerful figures in political, business and celebrity circles. New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University explores why powerful people – many of whom take a moral high ground – don’t practice what they preach. [continue reading…]

What makes us Moral

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn’t lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger “soul.” The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

Link to read  featured article:
Time
November 26, 2007
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