Why do moral people so often fail to act morally? Standard scientific answers point to poor moral judgment (based on deficient character development, reason, or intuition) or to situational pressure. I consider a third possibility: a relative lack of truly moral motivation and emotion. What has been taken for moral motivation is often instead a subtle form of egoism. Recent research provides considerable evidence for moral hypocrisy-motivation to appear moral while, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral-but very little evidence for moral integrity-motivation to actually be moral. The lack of truly moral motivation may, in turn, be linked to a lack of truly moral emotion, at least in response to violation of certain moral standards. © The Author(s) 2011.
CITATION STYLE
Batson, C. D. (2011). What’s wrong with morality? Emotion Review. SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911402380
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