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Preeti on the Web |
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Providing Food for Thought |
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To cheat or not to cheat: the situation, not our morals, determines our decisions. |
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Situations—not morals—determine human behavior |
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October 5, 2005 |
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Note: This op-ed column appeared in The Chronicle Oct. 5, 2005. Last school year, a chemistry professor at Duke University let his class of approximately 300 students self-grade its homework. The average grade on the assignments was nearly 100 percent, despite low class attendance. On exams, which were open-note, the class average hovered in the low-to-mid eighties. There were two possible reasons for this discrepancy in grades: 1) 300 dishonest Duke undergraduates all just happened to enroll in the same chemistry course, or 2) situations—not personal morals—determine human behavior. Common sense eliminates reason one. Reason two is right, but it drives a stake into one of the core values of American civic culture: individual responsibility. Individual responsibility assumes that people are free agents who, acting out of their own free wills, make their own individual choices in life. If people make bad choices in life, it’s their fault alone. Finger-pointing is not allowed. Free will, though, is ultimately just an illusion. What may seem to be “choices” are simply reactions to one’s external environment. Like the self-grading students in the chemistry class, people’s behavior is determined by the set-up of the situations they encounter, not personal morals. This point is illustrated well by the so-called obesity epidemic. Americans aren’t force fed 32-ounce Cokes at the movies and 560-calorie Big Macs at McDonald’s. But, they sure seem to be stuffing their faces a lot more now than they were a few decades ago. Where does individual responsibility come into play? Do the Americans of 2005 really have less self control than the Americans of 1985? The same logic applies to immigrants. Fresh off the boat, they’re slim. A few years later, they’re as pokable as the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Do immigrants simply turn in their willpower as they pick up their green cards? No, the obesity epidemic isn’t the result of a nationwide decline of the personal virtues of restraint and moderation. Rather, it stems from the growth of a market economy that responds to consumer demands, which in this case happen to be the basic human biological drives for calorie-dense foods and energy-saving activities. Would you like some fries with that? Many people may initially find it uncomfortable to think that free will is an illusion. Most of the time, we feel like we are making our own decisions. Don’t we all choose what to wear each morning? But, as I look into my closet, why is my selection limited to my jeans and colorful corduroy pants, as opposed to business suits, kente cloth dresses or sarongs? The answer: my culture, gender, age and idiosyncratic personality traits determine the contents of my closet. Whether I choose today to don my green corduroys or blues jeans depends on my mood at the moment, what I’ve worn in the previous few days and local weather conditions. Free will is not part of the equation. A disconcerting implication of the denial of free will is the attack it makes on accountability. If people truly aren’t free agents, then how can a society justify holding them accountable for their actions? There’s no reason for worry. We can, for example, justify the prosecution of thieves on the basis that properly administered punishments— such as incarceration—protect law-abiding citizens, teach incarcerated thieves not to steal in the future, and deter potential thieves from adopting a life of crime. Just because people aren’t free agents doesn’t mean they can go scot-free! The one great benefit that humankind stands to gain from jettisoning free will is that it will focus greater attention on reforming societal conditions and rules so that they better promote desired human behaviors. Government corruption in developing countries, for example, isn’t the result of the individual moral shortcomings of public officials. Just as in the case of the “dishonest” Duke chemistry students, government corruption is the fault of weak policies that don’t effectively deter, detect and penalize inappropriate conduct. Bottom line: Human “decision-making” can be schematically portrayed as follows:
A person’s environment (as in societal rules and conditions), combined with that person’s life history, biological drives and innate personality traits (e.g. a risk-taking versus cautious personality), factor into that person’s subconscious cost-benefit analysis of a situation. Out of this weighing of the costs versus the benefits of choosing a particular behavior, the person “makes the decision” that maximizes benefits over costs. Free will is out of the equation! If we want to change people’s behaviors, we have change something in the box above! Epilogue: Free will is just an illusion. Yes, it’s bitter pill to swallow.
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