Good people do bad things not only because they yielded to temptation but because they failed to realize there was a temptation confronting them.
A new study sheds a brighter light on why a good person's ethics and moral fortitude fail him when faced with tempting situations that had dire consequences. It comes down to not recognizing one is faced by temptation.
Researchers at the Rutgers Business School said the result of their study seems to indicate being aware of these temptations and thinking about their long-term consequences are key to helping a person overcoming the urge to act unethically.
"There is this general, overarching question of why good people occasionally do bad things," said Oliver Sheldon, assistant professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School and co-author of the study.
"We think part of the explanation for why people occasionally don't behave ethically is their failure to confront and realize there's a temptation," Sheldon said.
The study suggests people have to see a temptation as one they might have to struggle with again, and that might endanger their reputation and integrity, said CNN.
"Just thinking about temptation generally in advance essentially helps them to counteract temptation when they encounter it," Sheldon said.
There are a lot of cases where being exposed to a temptation spurs us to take action to resist it, he pointed out.
The study also found that people will only resist temptation if they "think of it as a potential pattern of temptations they are likely to face," Sheldon said.
He noted people might see this pattern of temptations as more likely to go against their long term goals for their reputation and self-image.
To arrive at these conclusions, researchers placed tested the ethics of a group of people in a series of situations where acting dishonestly could benefit them in the short-term.
Sheldon noted there are many ways people can use on these findings in their own lives to resist temptations. They can start by thinking about the temptations they are likely to face before they get into a situation where they have to deal with this temptation.
The study was published in the journal, Society for Personality and Social Psychology.