Who do you think you are and how bad could you be? | Life and... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/24/who-do-y...

Who do you think you are and how bad

could you be?
Given the right (or wrong) situation, each of us might become anyone

What you call your self might just be a bundle of processes. Illustration: Thomas Pullin for the Guardian

Oliver Burkeman
Friday 24 March 2017 15.00GMT

W
hat turns good people bad? The road to depravity and corruption, we tend to
assume, is a slippery slope: a few small immoral acts, then things snowball,
and before you know it, the oodgates have opened. (To clarify, this slippery
slope is near ahydroelectric power plant, hence the oodgates. Also, its
snowing.)

But according to a recent Dutch study, a more appropriate metaphor might be stepping
o a cli. Participants were invited to roleplay a business negotiation, and got various
options for bribing a public ocial: gradually, with various small inducements; with one
big bribe; or not at all. The short version: they were far likelier to become corrupt when
presented with a single golden opportunity than aseries of incremental moral
compromises. They didnt slide into wickedness. They plummeted.

The researchers hunch, which makes sense, isthat its less painful to rationalise

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Who do you think you are and how bad could you be? | Life and... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/24/who-do-y...

immorality once than repeatedly. Wed rather go through the internal process of
self-justication a single time, even for amajor infraction, than feel obliged to do so
morning after morning in the bathroom mirror. But the nding hints at a more unsettling
notion thats dogged psychology since the start. As demonstrated by everything from
Shakespearean tragedy to Breaking Bad, were fascinated by how someone with one kind
of personality turns into someone with another. The implication is that the rest of the
time our personalities are fundamentally stable. But what if it makes no sense to talk
ofourhaving personalities in this way at all?

This is known as the person-situation debate, and it speaks to the worry that, deep
down, there might be no reliable set of traits, persisting through time, identiable as
you; and that, given the right (or wrong) situation, each of us might become anyone. In
minor ways, this rears its head all the time. The coee shop on your corner closes, or
your gym membership expires, and two months later you suddenly realise you havent
bought coee or exercised since; your situation changed, and your behaviour just
followed along. Then there are more alarming cases from psychologys back catalogue,
such as the Stanford prison experiment, or Stanley Milgram ordering people to
administer apparently fatal electric shocks. Its sometimes argued these demonstrate
that, under the surface, were all basically evil; but you could equally argue they show
that none of us is basically anything.

Follow this to its conclusion and you reach an old, old idea, arising in the philosophy of
David Hume and dating back to Buddha: that what you call your self might just bea
bundle of processes, not fundamentally distinct from all the other processes that
constitute the universe. This doesnt mean each ofus doesnt have identiable traits. (A
bundle of processes might still be apredictable bundle.) But its a reminder of how many
debates, on everything from gender politics to how nations turn fascist, still assume that
each of us has some xed essence, only moderately aected by our circumstances.
Maybe we dont. Maybe that slippery slope is built on sand.

oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com

Topics
Psychology/This column will change your life
Health & wellbeing/features

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