Out of Character Part 5

To understand why this happens, let's think back to the ancestral brain for a minute. Back in the days of tribal compet.i.tion, when violence was imminent, who was more likely to be the culprit, "us" or "them"? Hands down it has to be them, whoever the "them" are. So if a person sensed that aggression was likely (which would be signaled by the feeling of anger), the short-term systems of the mind went into red alert and "profiled" using the only criteria they had-better safe than dead. So the gra.s.shopper, gaining precedence for the moment, makes you a momentary bigot. Fast-forward to our lab again. When the angry partic.i.p.ants saw a guy from the other group-in other words, one of "them"-they instinctively hated him. Those who didn't feel angry felt no threat, so their intuitive systems had no reason to judge these others in a negative manner.4 The most important point here is that a simple change in context-feeling angry, for example-can cause prejudice to seemingly come out of nowhere. What's more, it can do so instantly and arbitrarily. Perhaps most unsettling of all, it can direct this prejudice toward people who, rationally considered, pose no threat whatsoever. Just ask Mel Gibson.

Mel, as many of you know, was widely hailed for his work as an actor and director during the 1990s and early 2000s. His philanthropy was well known, and for a time his "piety" was inspiring to many. Lately, though, Mel's character has seemed quite in flux, as he seems to go from generous and devout Catholic to racist pig and back again. Let's look at a few examples. Mel has been caught on record uttering h.o.m.ophobic remarks, yet he joined with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to host ten gay and lesbian filmmakers for seminars on the set of one of his movies. When stopped by a police officer in 2006 for speeding, an angry Mel, believing the officer was Jewish, muttered, "f.u.c.king Jew ... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."5 But right afterward, he voluntarily met with Jewish leaders to apologize for his "moment of insanity" and seek guidance on how to heal. And in the most shocking event to date, Mel was recorded by his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva screaming at her that she dressed like a wh.o.r.e and if she were "raped by a pack of n.i.g.g.e.rs" it would be her fault.6 Yet Whoopi Goldberg, a longtime friend of Mel's, continues to attest that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.7 True, it's easy to dismiss Gibson's attempts to redeem himself as nothing more than PR stunts, and maybe they were. But that's not really the point. The point is that Mel was capable of such wild swings in behavior in the first place-that alongside his prejudices, some sort of social conscience must have lurked.

The reason these events seem so hard to put together is that, in the old view of character, they make little sense. Is Mel a bigot or isn't he? But when you think about it within the framework we suggest, the right question isn't whether Mel is a bigot but rather why he clearly acts like a bigot sometimes but not at others. The answer: context. Just as with our partic.i.p.ants, though to an admittedly much greater and more repulsive degree, anger seems to have been the psychological mechanism that triggered the emergence of Mel's latent prejudices.8 Up to this point we've been defining prejudice simply as the mind's intuitive bias against one group or another. That may be scientifically interesting, but if we truly want to show that changes in these psychological forces impact character, then we need to convince you that these subconscious biases actually do something-that they exert some influence on our decisions and behaviors. Fair enough. What we do know from a decade of research is that not only do these intuitions impact people's behavior far more than they realize, but their influence is more p.r.o.nounced when the rational systems of the mind go off-line. That is, we tend to exhibit more bias when we're rushed, tired, or just not thinking, or when the long-term-oriented systems don't have the time or inclination to fight hard to tip the scale back. Let's look at the evidence.

One of the clearest and most compelling examples of how intuitive biases can sway our behavior comes from work by Alexander Green, Dana Carney, and their colleagues from Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital.9 The team presented more than sixty white physicians with medical information about several African American patients who were experiencing chest pains. The physicians had to recommend whether or not to treat each patient with clot-busting drugs that would reduce the likelihood of a subsequent cardiac failure. But first the physicians completed an IAT gauging their intuitive views about race, as well as a more explicit questionnaire. What Green and his team found was startling. Even though the symptoms and severity of the heart conditions across black and white patients were the same, in this high-stress and high-fatigue hospital environment, physicians whose IATs indicated stronger intuitive biases against African Americans were significantly less likely to recommend potentially lifesaving treatment for black patients than for white ones. What's more, these same physicians didn't report any prejudiced feelings on their questionnaires; they seemed to have no conscious awareness of their bias. But it nonetheless impacted their actions to a disturbing degree.

Similar studies have found that intuitive biases impact hiring practices as well. The economist Dan-Olof Rooth and his colleagues submitted sets of resumes and applications (for actual jobs) to human resources professionals throughout Sweden. The qualifications on each resume were identical; the only difference was whether the surname of the applicant was Swedish or Arabic. Previously Rooth had managed to a.s.sess intuitive bias in the HR workers by paying a subset of them to take part in a study that, unbeknownst to them, measured their bias using an Arab-vs.-Swede IAT. Here again he found that gut-level bias had a huge impact. The higher the bias against Arabs, the fewer Arab applicants that professional picked out of the hundreds of resumes, even though these applicants had the same qualifications as the Swedes.10 And once again the level of conscious bias the HR workers reported had no correlation with the decisions they made; like the doctors, they had no idea the bias existed.

Unfortunately, these are but a few of many examples. The list goes on and on. From doctors deciding whether or not to administer lifesaving treatments and HR professionals choosing whom to hire to police officers and soldiers deciding whether or not to pull a trigger, the evidence couldn't be more clear. Prejudices can and do shape our behavior without us even realizing it, but perhaps most troubling, the prejudices themselves can emerge in each of us at the drop of a hat.

Not that there's anything wrong with that ...

At this point you might be protesting that surely we have more control over our own actions than that. We don't have to be slaves to the systems of the gra.s.shopper, do we? There must be a way to keep these biases from rising to the surface and influencing how we act. Why not just try to be careful-to say the right things, make decisions rationally, and make extra sure what we're doing isn't offensive or discriminatory? Put brakes on the gra.s.shopper, so to speak. It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately, this tactic not only is sometimes ineffective but also tends to backfire.

To understand why, you need look no further than one of the most popular TV shows of all time, Seinfeld. In one memorable episode, Jerry and George are trying to convince a reporter who is doing a story on Jerry that they aren't a gay couple. The reporter earlier overheard the two playing a prank in which they pretended to be lovers. But the reporter refuses to believe it was a joke, and now, with their manhood in question, desperation is setting in. "We're not gay!" Jerry protests to the reporter. But as soon as the words fly out of his month, he realizes he doesn't want to be taken for a bigot either, so he blurts out the now-famous line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." "It's okay if that's who you are," he continues, beginning to stumble. "I have many gay friends." "My father's gay," chimes in George. And on the uncomfortable situation goes as the two put their feet further and further into their mouths trying to convince the reporter that while they aren't gay, they aren't biased against gays either.

The reason this scene is so funny and well remembered is because it perfectly captures the fact that, ironically, trying too hard to seem unbiased can make us look like even more of a bigot. Don't believe us? Say you're trying to point out someone in a crowded train station at rush hour. Let's say this person is black, wearing a blue s.h.i.+rt and brown loafers, and most of the people around happen to be white. You probably don't say, "See him over there, the black guy?" even though it would be the quickest way to identify him. Most people would probably say, "See him over there, the guy in the blue s.h.i.+rt?" even if nine out of ten men in the crowd were wearing blue s.h.i.+rts. The reason? Because many of us think that appearing to simply notice race might make us seem like a racist. So we try to appear completely color-blind, even though we clearly aren't. But this strategy can go very wrong, just as it did for Jerry.

In one of the best demonstrations of this phenomenon, Michael Norton from Harvard Business School and his colleagues conducted two experiments.11 The first was designed to show that even though most of us claim it, true color blindness is a rare thing when it comes to race. The second was designed to show the counterintuitive results of trying to appear color-blind.

In the first experiment, partic.i.p.ants were asked either to sort pictures of faces that varied along a number of characteristics, such as race, gender, hair color, facial expression, age, background color of the photo, and so on, or to guess how long it would take them to sort the faces based on each characteristic. As you might expect, the partic.i.p.ants' times revealed that categorizing by race turned out to be one of the fastest ways to sort. However, this fact seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to the partic.i.p.ants, the majority of whom, when asked to guess how long it would take them to sort the faces based on the different criteria, reported that race would take them the second-longest time (ranking it only before age). It's important to note that it's not that they thought sorting by color would be hard-they all noted that sorting by hair color and background color would be easy. It was just sorting by skin color that would be difficult. What's most likely the case, of course, is that Norton's partic.i.p.ants knew they could easily sort by attending to race; they just didn't want it to appear that way. In short, they wanted to appear color-blind.

So what's the big deal here? Many people would say there's nothing wrong with fudging the truth a little in order to seem like a more open-minded person, right? This brings us to the second experiment. Here Norton and his colleagues had the clever idea of having people play a modified version of the board game Guess Who? Unbeknownst to the partic.i.p.ants, of course, each one was purposely paired with either a white or black confederate. After a faked random draw, the partic.i.p.ant would learn that she'd be a.s.suming the role of questioner. She would then be given a set of thirty-two photos like those in the first experiment, while the answerer (the confederate) was given a set of six photos: three white faces and three black faces. The goal of the game was simple. On each trial, the questioner had to identify the face that the answerer was looking at using as few yes/no questions as possible.

What happened was right in line with the results of the previous experiment. In an attempt to appear unbiased, white partic.i.p.ants were much less likely to ask if the photo was of a white or black individual when the person they were playing with was black. Obviously, asking about the race of the face in the photo was one of the most efficient strategies in playing the game (using physical characteristics as clues to guess the photo is the whole point of the game), but concern about seeming racist was enough to make partic.i.p.ants avoid the topic like the plague.

Again, you might be thinking, so what? Well, it turns out that going to such lengths to appear color-blind can actually have some very real and unintended consequences for our social relations.h.i.+ps. To see how, let's look at what happened next. Norton had independent third parties view the interactions and make judgments about the partic.i.p.ants. When he did, the results were as surprising as they were consistent. The greater the attempt to appear color-blind, the more these individuals were judged as unfriendly and aloof. What this means in practice is that the very people who were trying most to appear unbiased in the presence of a minority group member were exactly the same people who were coming off as disengaged, dismissive, and possibly racist. In other words, they were projecting the exact opposite persona of the one they intended.

Taken together, the upshot of all the work we've discussed here is that whether we like it or not, our minds are built to see the world in terms of alliances-us vs. them-and attempts to counteract the resulting biases at the behest of the ant can sometimes be counterproductive. Yet giving the gra.s.shopper free rein isn't a wise strategy either. Doing so can lead to discrimination of the worst kind, especially when what we know about members of other groups is based on misinformation that's been filtered through a biased lens supplied by the media. But if our minds are p.r.o.ne to stereotyping by extrapolating any information we take in, how can we keep prejudices at bay? It's not easy, but one of the best things we can do is to simply interact with as diverse a group of people as possible. The mind is quick at adjusting its expectations. So the more interactions you have with people not "like you," the better your mind will become at carving out mental shortcuts based on their actual (not supposed) attributes and the more variability in their behaviors you will see, which will strengthen the ant's push to urge you to learn about each person as an individual. Navigating these waters can be treacherous. But as a first step, it's imperative to realize that prejudice can be avoided only when you first recognize that you are not immune to it.

9 / TRUE COLORS?.

Understanding and managing the spectrum of character.

By this point, it's become clear that character-yours, ours, anyone's-is much more flexible than most people would think. Throughout this book we've seen examples of regular people (as well as celebrities and politicians) acting in ways that surprise us-and sometimes acting in ways that surprise even themselves. We've shown you that subtle changes in environment or context can lead any of us to be both saints and sinners. This raises two big questions: Why does the mind work this way? And if what we think of as our character really is so malleable and fickle, can such a thing even be said to exist?

The short answer to the first question is that the system works this way because, quite simply, it's the best evolution has been able to come up with. It works well to optimize our lives, except when it doesn't, but it works more often than not. The long answer, though, requires us to differentiate between what is optimal and what is good. Optimal, at least in the evolutionary sense, means surviving to raise kids, who will carry on your genes. For humans, the optimal choice for how to behave usually lies somewhere between short-term and long-term concerns. Sometimes it's useful to maximize immediate, selfish goals-to cheat for gain, to pretend you have higher status to get something you want, to hit someone before he or she hits you. But acting this way too often will quickly make you shunned, and like it or not, humans need each other for survival. So the mind needs systems that favor both selfless and selfish behavior. The trick is figuring out which should take the lead at any given time.

Optimizing your character, then, isn't about being "good" all the time. But you can't be "bad" all the time either and still hope to get by. For example, if you always felt compa.s.sion and helped others, you might give away everything you had. But if you were never compa.s.sionate, perhaps no one would ever help you when you were in need. Likewise, if you always were a hypocrite, no one would ever trust you, but if you were never a hypocrite, you might not be able to take advantage of a new opportunity that came knocking. The point is, we need flexibility, which is why the mind uses the system it does. If navigating our social world were simple, perhaps we could successfully find our way simply by following a set of maxims or commandments. But it's not simple. Thus, with each new situation, how we should act is computed anew based on the needs and expectations of that specific moment in time. It's all aimed at finding the perfect balance between the two competing sides.

If you've ever studied math or architecture, you're probably familiar with the idea of the "golden mean." If you haven't, the golden mean refers to a ratio that has special properties. It's believed that when the elements of art or architecture are constructed using this ratio, they achieve the perfect balance and thus are most pleasing to the human eye. (Indeed, the golden mean can be found in many of the great masterpieces of modern civilization, from Da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper, from the Parthenon to the Great Pyramids.) But the golden mean also has another interesting albeit less well-known property. It's an irrational number, which means that it changes with each added decimal place; it can never be definitively calculated. Finding the sweet spot for optimizing character is similar. There is a point that works best, but we believe that this spot, just like the golden mean, is always being adjusted. We may get close, but that perfect balance point keeps s.h.i.+fting with each new situation, each new bit of information, each subsequent gambit by our inner ant and our inner gra.s.shopper to take the lead and thereby sway our actions toward its goals.

But don't forget that when we talk about optimal character, we're not equating that with virtue, at least not as it's traditionally defined. After all, virtue can mean many things. For Aristotle, virtue meant optimization in the sense in which we're using it. Virtue, he argued, was to be found in the balance between selfish short-term desires and selfless long-term ones. Vice was to be found at either extreme. But for many others, virtue means "good" in the n.o.ble or heavenly sense. The only difficulty here, though, is that what qualifies as "good" often changes across cultures and through time. Although most societies and religions argue that generosity and truthfulness are virtues, some also say that killing can be just, and that men and women should be treated differently. Some religious texts themselves even contain direct contradictions of what virtuous behavior is, leaving it to the current set of priests, rabbis, or teachers to define what const.i.tutes virtue in any specific context. But as we said at the outset, we're scientists, not theologians or philosophers, so we're not appointing ourselves as the ones to define virtue for you. We can tell you how the system works, but not how you should calibrate it. Still, once you have come up with your answer for what the golden mean of character is for you (and it may take a while), what we can do is give you some advice on how to achieve it.

Calibrating your character.

Once you accept that character is flexible, and that what determines it are sets of distinct psychological mechanisms competing to drive your behavior, you can begin to exert some influence-not, as it is often believed, solely through willpower, but through specific skills and strategies based on psychological principles. As we've noted throughout the book, you can't a.s.sume that your intuitions are always correct. Likewise, you can't a.s.sume that reason is always unbiased. Any successful strategy, then, will rely on accurately a.s.sessing the context-knowing when to trust your gut and when to trust your common sense. And as you've seen in the preceding chapters, you'll also have to be on the lookout for more subtle cues (e.g., if you're angry, what you're smelling, whether you've just laughed, whether you're walking in sync with someone else, and the like) that may trick you and, consequently, end up pus.h.i.+ng you in the wrong direction. We hope that what you've read about how morality, jealousy, bigotry, honesty, compa.s.sion, trust, and pride work has helped you sharpen your defenses against forces conspiring to co-opt the decisions that shape your character.

We've seen throughout this book that the different processes of the mind really do matter with respect to what you do and how you're perceived. But as it turns out, there is also emerging real-world evidence to suggest that simply being able to recognize the factors that can subtly influence your emotions can produce tremendous social benefits. For example, Marc Brackett and his colleagues at Yale inst.i.tuted a social and emotional learning program they call the RULER in several elementary school cla.s.srooms in which teachers also regularly taught units on developing good character. The RULER approach makes teaching children how to recognize and manage their emotions a central part of the regular academic curriculum, so kids in the RULER cla.s.srooms were taught various skills related to knowing when and how it's useful to act on emotional intuitions and when it's not. Kids who didn't get the RULER curriculum learned about developing character in the old way-no skills focusing on different psychological strategies, just the usual "here's how a good person acts" stuff. By year's end, the kids involved in RULER were performing better academically and were more socially successful than their non-RULER peers, more often demonstrating work habits and social behaviors that were viewed as desirable, adaptable, and competent.1 Similarly, recent findings are beginning to show that being able to recognize biases in our emotional intuitions-and to know when to (or not to) override them-is a.s.sociated not only with greater life and relations.h.i.+p satisfaction but also with advancement at work and increased leaders.h.i.+p potential.2 All this points to the basic fact that knowledge is power, and that character, like any skill, can be learned, a.s.suming you have the right tools at your disposal. We hope that this book will be one such tool to help get you started.

True colors?

Now let's turn to our second question: does character even exist? Throughout this book, we've been showing you how subtle manipulations in contexts or situations can produce unexpected and wild swings in behavior, driving individuals to act seemingly in ways that are "out of character." Given this fact, you might be tempted to conclude that anyone is capable of anything and "character" simply doesn't exist. That's not exactly right. Character does exist, just not in the way you think. The mistakes we make in cla.s.sifying a person's character or "true colors" are, in fact, very similar to the errors we make in understanding colors in general. You see, most people perceive colors-red, blue, purple-as defined categories. That is, each color has an essence and clear boundaries. "Purpleness" means something unique, and something very different from "yellowness." What we know from science, of course, is that this isn't the case.

As the frequencies (or wavelengths) of light change, what our eyes see goes from red to green to blue to purple. Our brains perceive these different colors as having unique essences, but in reality they are just variations along a single continuum-the only thing that is changing is the wavelength of the light. So although it may be true that certain yellows are easily identifiable as yellows, it's not always that cut-and-dried. What about citrine, for example? Is it yellow or brown? Can it be both? And isn't brown just a mix of light of other wavelengths anyway? The point is, when you begin to look at color more carefully, it quickly becomes clear that there aren't distinct ent.i.ties, only spots along a continuum of long to short wavelengths. The boundaries for the labels we use can be quite fuzzy. It's the same with character. Our minds "see" different colors of character-n.o.ble, sleazy, trustworthy, unreliable-based on certain actions, but then make the mistake of a.s.signing a person that label unequivocally. So if we define a person as n.o.ble and then she does something petty, we a.s.sume she's acting out of character. In our minds, n.o.ble, just like purple, is a distinct category; it can't bleed over into something else.

But as we've seen, character, like color, varies along a continuum-a continuum not of wavelengths but of our psychological needs flanked by processes embodied in the metaphors of the ant and gra.s.shopper. It is true that, based on differences in temperament, culture, and the types of environs they habitually inhabit, certain people may more frequently seem to occupy one spot along the continuum between long- and short-term desires, and their actions may more frequently tend to correspond to one side of the scale. But as we've shown, where people end up at any one moment often depends on the context. It is certainly the case that each of the competing sides will have its day as situations change. What this means is that so-called swings in character are to be expected; exceptions are the rule. There are no firm boundaries for character, only a scale that can s.h.i.+ft, and s.h.i.+ft quickly, moving us to a new "color" along the spectrum of vice and virtue.

This can be a hard thing to wrap our heads around. When our expectations about someone (or even ourselves) are violated-Tiger Woods' affairs, Lisa Nowak's jealousy-fueled road trip, Farron Hall's act of selfless bravery, and so forth-we often feel we've been fooled. We have. But we've been fooled by the way our brains perceive the world, not by the individual actors. Only once we accept that all our minds function along this same continuum and that we can all exhibit a range of "character types" can we begin to navigate our social world more effectively. Seeing that there is a thin line between the cowards and the heroes, the bigoted and the tolerant, the promiscuous and the chaste, the saints and the sinners, can help us better understand and cope with those all too frequent occasions when we, or those important to us, act "out of character."

Acknowledgments.

Books such as this one are a team effort, and we don't mean just us. Many, many people have played important roles both in conducting the experiments described and in helping us to have the time and opportunity to write about them. First and foremost, we'd like to thank our families, who were probably the only people on the planet happier than we were when we finally finished writing. Dave thanks his wife, Amy, and his daughters, for their insights, moral support, and just plain love (as well as for reminding him that sometimes it's more fun to go to the beach than to stare at a blank computer screen). Carlo thanks his wife, Liz, and daughter, Isabella, for the smiles, distractions, and discussions that made this process a pleasure from start to finish, and the family and friends whose diverse and colorful characters have, perhaps unknowingly, inspired much of the work herein.

Beyond our families, we thank the many brilliant, warm, and wonderful people with whom we've had the good fortune to work. In fact, many of the findings you'll read about in this book would not have been discovered if not for the intelligence and dedication of the young scholars who have been a part of the lab. Each of these individual's contributions deserves to be noted, and so we have included a Guide to the Lab at the end of the volume.

We also owe a debt of grat.i.tude to our editor and champion at Crown, Talia Krohn. Talia was the one who, from the first instant, saw the promise in our work and made it her mission to make sure everyone else did as well. Through several incarnations of the ma.n.u.script (and lots of red ink), Talia helped us to tell the story we wanted to tell. We also want to thank our agent, Jim Levine, and all the fine folks at the Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency for guiding us successfully through the sometimes Byzantine-seeming world that is the publis.h.i.+ng industry. If not for Jim, we might never have taken a shot at writing a book.

Finally, we want to thank the inst.i.tutions that have made this work possible. Much of the research described in this book has benefited greatly from the financial a.s.sistance provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Inst.i.tute of Mental Health. We also thank Northeastern University for its continued support of the lab and Dave's fantastic colleagues in the Psychology Department for putting up with his daily complaints about writer's block.

Notes.

All of the research we discuss in this book has been published in top-tier scientific journals, which means it's been vetted by many of the most demanding people around-our professional colleagues. But part of good science is being able to look at the data for yourself. So in case you ever wonder whether we considered possibility X or controlled for variable Y, or just how long people helped others or how much they punished them, or exactly how we set up procedure Z, you can find all the nitty-gritty details that we (mercifully) didn't put in this book in the papers and articles referenced below.

1 / SAINTS AND SINNERS.

1. "S.C. Governor Hears Annual Scouting Report from an Eagle," Augusta Chronicle, March 3, 2005.

2. J. Sanford, Staying True (New York: Random House, 2010), 27.

3. Ibid., 136.

4. "Governor Sanford's Former Chief of Staff Speaks," WTOC radio interview, June 24, 2009, http://www.wtoc.com/global/story.asp?s=10591454.

5. "Jennifer Sanford's Friends Speak Out," CBS Early Show interview, August 24, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/24/earlyshow/main5261438.shtml.

6. J. Sanford, Staying True (New York: Random House, 2010), 167.

7. Vogue interview, August 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jenny-sanford-tells-vogue-mark-sanfords-affair-shocked/story?id=8348720.

8. P. Rozin and E. Royzman, "Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion," Personality and Social Psychology Review 5 (2001): 296320.

9. For a great discussion on why populations of true altruists are unstable, see R. H. Frank, Pa.s.sions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).

10. J. T. Cacioppo and B. Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).

11. Ran Kivetz and Anat Keinan, "Repenting Hyperopia: An a.n.a.lysis of Self-Control Regrets," Journal of Consumer Research 33 (2006): 27382.

12. I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

13. W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, and M. L. Rodriguez, "Delay of Gratification in Children," Science 244 (1989): 93338.

14. For a great discussion of the role of self-control in intertemporal choice, see G. S. Berns, D. Laibson, and G. Loewenstein, "Intertemporal Choice-Toward an Integrative Framework," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (2007): 48288.

15. For a seminal discussion of the benefits of altruism and the role of intuitive emotional responses in causing it, see R. L. Trivers, "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1971): 3557.

16. We'll be providing many examples of these types of phenomena, but a clear example of the one cited here can be found in P. Valdesolo and D. DeSteno, "Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment," Psychological Science 17 (2006): 47677.

2 / HYPOCRISY VS. MORALITY.

1. Interview on Meet the Press (NBC), January 24, 1999.

2. J. Green, "The Bookie of Virtue," Was.h.i.+ngton Monthly, June 2003.

3. P. Valdesolo and D. DeSteno, "The Duality of Virtue: Deconstructing the Moral Hypocrite," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008): 133438.

4. For a nice demonstration of this fact, see D. T. Gilbert and R. E. Osborne, "Thinking Backward: Some Curable and Incurable Consequences of Cognitive Busyness," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57 (1989): 94049.

5. Valdesolo and DeSteno, "The Duality of Virtue."

6. P. Valdesolo and D. DeSteno, "Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment," Psychological Science 17 (2006): 47677.

7. For great examples of this type of effect, see D. DeSteno, R. E. Petty, D. T. Wegener, and D. D. Rucker, "Beyond Valence in the Perception of Likelihood: The Role of Emotion Specificity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 397416.

8. J. D. Greene, R. B. Sommerville, L. E. Nystrom, J. M. Darley, and J. D. Cohen, "An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment," Science 293 (2001): 21058.

9. S. Schnall, J. Haidt, G. L. Clore, and A. H. Jordan, "Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34 (2008): 10961109.

10. C.-B. Zhong and K. A. Liljenquist, "Was.h.i.+ng Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing," Science 313 (2006): 145152.

11. S. Sachdeva, R. Iliev, and D. L. Medin, "Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners: The Paradox of Moral Self-Regulation," Psychological Science 20, 4 (2009): 52328.

3/ SOUL MATE OR PLAYMATE?.

1. Taken from Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium.

2. Advice and a.s.sociated statistics showing effect of pictures reported by Match.com, http://international.match.com/help/faqdetail.aspx?sec=10.

3. R. Anderson and S. Nida, "Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Opposite- and Same-s.e.x Evaluations," Journal of Personality 46 (1978): 40113; I. H. Frieze, J. E. Olson, and J. Russell, "Attractiveness and Income for Men and Women in Management," Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21, 13 (1991): 103957; S. G. West and T. J. Brown, "Physical Attractiveness, the Severity of the Emergency and Helping: A Field Experiment and Interpersonal Simulation," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 11 (1991): 53138; J. E. Stewart II, "Defendant's Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Trials," Journal of Applied Social Psychology 10 (1980): 34861.

4. J. H. Langlois, J. M. Ritter, L. A. Roggman, and L. S. Vaughn, "Facial Diversity and Infant Preferences for Attractive Faces," Developmental Psychology 27 (1991): 7984.

5. J. H. Langlois, J. M. Ritter, R. J. Casey, and D. B. Sawin, "Infant Attractiveness Predicts Maternal Behaviors and Att.i.tudes," Developmental Psychology 31 (1995): 46472.

6. R. Thornhill and S. Gangestad, "Human Facial Beauty: Averageness, Symmetry and Parasite Resistance," Human Nature 4 (1993): 23769.

7. G. Livs.h.i.+ts and E. Kobyiiansky, "Fluctuating Asymmetry as a Possible Measure of Developmental Homeostasis in Humans: A Review," Human Biology 63 (1991): 44166.

8. David Buss, The Evolution of Desire, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

9. I. S. Penton-Voak and J. Y. Chen, "High Salivary Testosterone Is Linked to Masculine Male Facial Appearance in Humans," Evolution and Human Behavior 25, 4 (2004): 22941.

10. S. W. Gangestad and R. Thornhill, "The a.n.a.lysis of Fluctuating Asymmetry Redux: The Robustness of Parametric Statistics," Animal Behaviour 55, 2 (1998): 497501.

11. K. M. Durante, N. P. Li, and M. G. Haselton, "Changes in Women's Choice of Dress Across the Ovulatory Cycle: Naturalistic and Laboratory Task-Based Evidence," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, 11 (2008): 145160.

12. J. K. Maner, M. T. Gailliot, D. A. Rouby, and S. L. Miller, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You: Attentional Adhesion to Mates and Rivals," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93, 3 (2007): 389401.

13. a.s.sociated Press, "82 Years of 'I Do': World's Longest Marriage?" June 29, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8405716.

14. M. McIntyre, S. W. Gangestad, P. B. Gray, J. F. Chapman, T. C. Burnham, M. T. O'Rourke, and R. Thornhill, "Romantic Involvement Often Reduces Men's Testosterone Levels-But Not Always: The Moderating Role of Extrapair s.e.xual Interest," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 4 (2006): 64251.

15. M. G. Haselton and S. W. Gangestad, "Conditional Expression of Women's Desires and Men's Mate Guarding Across the Ovulatory Cycle," Hormones and Behavior 49 (2006): 50918.

16. G. C. Gonzaga, D. Keltner, E. A. Londahl, and M. D. Smith, "Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friends.h.i.+p," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, 2 (2001): 24762.

17. K. Cobb and M. Olson, "NASA to Review Process of Screening Astronauts," Houston Chronicle, February 7, 2007.

18. Official Nowak family statement issued on February 6, 2007.

19. D. DeSteno, P. Valdesolo, and M. Y. Bartlett, "Jealousy and the Threatened Self: Getting to the Heart of the Green-Eyed Monster," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91 (2006): 62641.

20. M. R. Leary and R. F. Baumeister, The Nature and Function of Self-Esteem (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000), 162.

21. "Teen Guilty of 1st-Degree Murder in Death of Stefanie Rengel, 14," CBC News, March 20, 2009, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/03/20/murder-rengel-trial.html.

22. DeSteno, Valdesolo, and Bartlett, "Jealousy and the Threatened Self."

4 / FROM PRIDE TO Hubris 1. A. Morton, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008); "Tom Cruise-Biography," TalkTalk, http://www.talktalk.co.uk/entertainment/film/biography/artist/tom-cruise/biography/124.