Good old cognitive dissonance.

We just can’t bear it. But nor will we face up to it. Having a bad conscience about lying or cheating or stealing won’t necessarily stop us from doing it. Instead, we’ll go to extraordinary lengths to ‘make it OK’. We’ll square off that conscience somehow, no matter how much self-deception it involves.

Watching Dan Ariely explain why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)reminded me that an explanation – any explanation, whether it’s ‘Aryan supremacy’ or ‘selling sub-prime mortgages will free the poor’ – can make good people do bad and/or stupid things. Create a convincing explanation and slap a label on it and away you go.

Of course, real psychopaths don’t actually need to waste their time coming up with explanations to make it OK for them to do bad stuff. They don’t have a conscience in the first place.

Mark