SSS 2009-12-31
时间：2018-12-02 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(十二)月
So 2009 was, in part, a year of powerful people behaving badly.
We had Kanye West stealing Taylor Swift’s moment at the VMA awards, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford disappearing to, ahem, hike the Appalachian trail, and of course David Letterman, Tiger Woods…
Well new research published in Psychological Science supports the old notion that power corrupts 1. Specifically, power can breed hypocrisy 2: the powerful can feel entitled not to obey the moral rules they demand others to follow.
Researchers assigned 172 subjects high-power roles (like prime minister) and low-power roles (like civil servant.) The subjects had to consider a series of moral dilemmas 3 involving stolen bikes, breaking traffic rules, and instituting taxes.
In each of the five experiments the more powerful characters consistently showed moral hypocrisy. They disapproved 4 of immoral 5 behavior (like…for instance the over-reporting of expenses) and yet behaved badly themselves. For instance, when powerful people were given an opportunity to self-report their success in a dice 6 game, they cheated reporting that they had won more times than actually did. The others note that a sense of entitlement is key here. Those who believe they are entitled to a high status position tended to be more hypocritical than those who feel they are not deserving of power.
In fact, this latter group held themselves to a higher standard than they did others. The powerful who did not feel entitled behaved similarly to powerless characters who tend to be harder on themselves than they are on others. And another note here is to honesty and integrity in 2010.
- The unrighteous penny corrupts the righteous pound. 不正当得来的便士使正当得来的英镑也受到玷污。
- Blue cinema corrupts the souls of people. 黄色电影腐蚀人们的灵魂。
- He railed against hypocrisy and greed.他痛斥伪善和贪婪的行为。
- He accused newspapers of hypocrisy in their treatment of the story.他指责了报纸在报道该新闻时的虚伪。
- They dealt with their dilemmas by mixing perhaps unintentionally an explosive brew. 他们――也许是无意地――把爆炸性的佐料混合在一起，以此来应付困难处境。 来自辞典例句
- Ten years later we encountered the same dilemmas in Vietnam. 十年后，我们又在越南遇到了同样进退两难的局面。 来自辞典例句
- My parents disapproved of my marriage. 我父母不赞成我的婚事。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- She disapproved of her son's indiscriminate television viewing. 她不赞成儿子不加选择地收看电视。 来自《简明英汉词典》