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There's an essay on lesswrong that also addresses the implications of Mazar and Zhong's experiments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d9/doing_your_good_deed_for_the_da

by keyist 17y ago

There's an essay on lesswrong that also addresses the implications of Mazar and Zhong's experiments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d9/doing_your_good_deed_for_the_day/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d9/doing_your_good_deed_for_the_day... "This meshes nicely with a self-signalling conception of morality. If part of the point of behaving morally is to convince yourself that you're a good person, then once you're convinced, behaving morally loses a lot of its value." Another example of moral self-licensing the essay brings up is how people having lunch after attending church tend to be more abusive with waitstaff and tip poorly.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
The source for your last sentence: http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2009/08/bait-and-switch-of-contemporary.html http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2009/08/bait-and-sw... >"The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth. I exaggerate of course. [...]" I find this quite interesting as whenever I've been out with Christians they've always seemed well behaved, inhibited from complaining even about bad service and terrible food and overgenerous in their tips; my wife for example. But we're in the UK. Observer bias is highly likely.