Tainted good
Making someone else better off without making any other person worse off, that can only be a good thing, right? Well, not quite, it seems.
Was Robin Hood, the English folk hero, the noble bandit who “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor” a good guy? Being generous to the less well-off would certainly appear to be a good thing. But stealing someone’s possessions, even if you question their legitimate ownership and if it is to distribute them to the destitute, is definitely open to moral challenge. We might therefore be a little reluctant to give Mr Hood or modern-day equivalents our unconditional support. But if we don’t resort to robbery, is being generous then sufficient to be judged a good person?
As social beings, we need to be able to evaluate the people we interact with, so we can predict with some confidence how they are likely to behave in future situations. In particular, we need a good idea whether they will act in a way that is beneficial, or detrimental to us. They may tell a good story, but the best way to judge them is to look at the choices they make, and how these might affect us.
Something of special interest is whether people tend to make selfish choices, with their own gain as the primary driver, or generous choices, where they have the benefit of others…
