Self righteous in the extreme

New research suggests that those who say the believe they are moral are likely to take extreme actions. The Washington Post reports:

Scott Reynolds and Tara Ceranic of the University of Washington said their research highlights the idea that people with exceptionally strong convictions about their moral goodness are likely to follow extreme courses of action because they can convince themselves that whatever they do is good. When the right course of action is ambiguous, they added in a paper published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, such people are likely to gravitate to opposite ends of a range of behaviors. When there is wide social consensus that something is wrong, they tend to conform to social norms.

When the researchers tested their hypothesis on managers who were asked to make a judgment call involving a conscientious employee who needed to go home early one day, they found that the managers who believed most strongly that they were good people came to extreme conclusions: They either let the employee off for the rest of the day with full pay, or insisted the employee stay and work full hours. The managers who did not think they were particularly good people tended to reach moderate conclusions: They had the employee finish some work and then leave early.

Read it all here (scroll to the end).

Robin Hanson has some thoughts and a link to the research at Overcoming Bias.

Does this research have any implications for the church?

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