In my view, there are “four forces” behind why humans avoid unethical behavior. I think understanding these forces can be useful when seeking to explain people’s actions (especially when someone does something truly terrible).
Ethical force 1: Emotion
The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing prosocial behavior. For instance, people who behave kindly tend to have more compassion than average.
Ethical force 2: Mimicry
Most of the time, most of us copy the behaviors of our social peers without even thinking. If everyone stands up, we’ll stand up. If everyone dangles a funny piece of fabric around their necks, we’ll do it too. Copying seems to be deeply rooted in us.
Social mimicry limits bad behaviors that aren’t the sort of thing that our peers do. For instance, in most subcultures in the US, punching someone when you feel angry is considered wildly inappropriate. So mimicry, in this case, can reduce violence.
Ethical force 3: Punishment
Most of us have a strong desire to belong. We don’t want to be ostracized, which encourages avoiding unethical actions that our social group condemns. If we hurt someone, they may personally take revenge on us. And nobody wants to go to jail, which helps reduce the frequency of people committing crimes.
Some unethical behavior is avoided just to avoid punishment.
Ethical force 4: Belief
Many people believe in specific ethical systems. Examples include Christians who adopt God’s commandments and the subset of Effective Altruists who adopt a flavor of utilitarianism. Belief can guide ethical behavior even in the absence of the other forces.
Individual Differences
People differ in how strongly they experience each of these four ethical forces. For instance, sociopaths (by definition) have a diminished capacity to experience #1 (especially empathy and compassion). From my observations, they also seem to be less influenced than usual by #2 (mimicry) and #3 (punishment). Hence, unless they have a strong #4 (belief system) or are especially fearful of punishment, they can be at a greatly elevated risk of unethical actions.
When someone engages in unethical behavior, we can return to this Four Forces framework to help make sense of their action. Most people would avoid that behavior due to some combination of the four forces described above. So, which of those forces were missing in this person’s case?
These Forces Can Also Promote Unethical Behavior
It’s also worth noting that each of these four forces can work in reverse. Whereas compassion discourages unethical behavior, emotions like anger can cause it.
Whereas mimicry encourages good behavior in some ways, in an unjust society, it can encourage bad behavior (e.g., you may harm the outgroup because your ingroup normalizes it).
In a society with highly unjust laws, punishment can actually promote unethical behavior (e.g., requiring that you discriminate against a certain group).
And some belief systems lead to unethical behavior as well (e.g., if you join a cult whose leader teaches you that you must commit mass murder to become a martyr).
Situational Factors
Some situations have little to no influence on one’s moral behavior, whereas other situations tend to create a strong pull toward or away from ethical behavior.
For example, there are some situations that would cause a substantial percentage of normal people to behave unethically. For instance:
• When there is a very strong social mimicry force in favor of unethical behavior (e.g., everyone you know thinks it’s good to hurt people from group X)
• When there is an extremely large personal gain to be made from behaving unethically, with no risk of punishment and with no identifiable victim (e.g., you have a chance to steal ten million dollars by taking pennies each from lots of people and it’s almost impossible for you to be caught)
• When there is an extremely large punishment for not behaving unethically (e.g., you’ll be tortured if you don’t commit a heinous act)
So when we’re considering whether a person will behave unethically, we need to consider both personal factors (e.g., do they experience strong compassion for others) and situational factors (such as those described above).
This piece was first written on December 9, 2022, and first appeared on this site on January 7, 2023.
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