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Hiding Your True Colors May Make You Feel Morally Tainted
The advice, whether from Shakespeare or a modern self-help guru, is common: Be true to yourself. New research suggests that this drive for authenticity — living in accordance with our sense of self, emotions, and
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The Ethical Calculus of the Tax Cheat
Researchers propose that people behave immorally only to a certain extent so that they can profit from their misconduct but still feel moral.
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Crimes and misdemeanors: Is there a slippery slope?
Vito Corleone, the mobster at the center of The Godfather saga, begins his career as a petty criminal. A Sicilian immigrant trying to raise a family in a New York City tenement, he agrees to
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Damned Spot: Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most complex characters, and by far the bard’s most obsessive. Immorally ambitious, she prods her husband to murder Scotland’s king, and then deludes herself into believing that “a little
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What a Mess: Chaos and Creativity
One of the most influential ideas about crime prevention to come out in recent years is something called the “broken windows theory.” According to this theory, small acts of deviance—littering, graffiti, broken windows—will, if ignored
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Is Religion Just An Assortment of Gut Feelings?
The vast majority of the planet’s 7 billion people ascribe to some kind of religious belief—that is, a faith in things that cannot be proven. This makes no sense from a scientific and psychological point
