Why saints turn sinners: To strike balance

Why saints turn sinners: To strike balance

Washington: Why does a hard core reformer like the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer previously known as the Sheriff of Wall Street virtually turn from saint into sinner overnight
Spitzer, once a hard-hitting prosecutor who routinely brought down the high and mighty for their crooked ways, ruined himself by being linked with a highend prostitute.
A new Northwestern University study suggests that people with ample moral self-worth in one aspect of their lives can slip into immorality or opposite behaviour in other areas.
Their abundant self-esteem somehow seems to push them to balance out all that goodness.
Think, for example, of that sugar and fat-laden concoction that you wolf down after a vigorous run, said Douglas Medin, psychology professor at the university. That pretty much eliminates the benefits of running an extra 20 minutes, he said. Conversely, the study shows, people who engage in immoral behaviour cleanse themselves with good work.
Simply stated, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth , they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.
If people feel too moral, co-author Sonya Sachdeva said, they might not have sufficient incentive to engage in moral action because of the costliness of being good.
An abundance of research shows that people are motivated both by the warm glow that results from good behavior and recognition of costly consequences of immoral behavior on kin and society at large. But the Northwestern study for the first time shows that perhaps people whose glow is much warmer than average are more likely to regulate behavior by acting in an opposite manner or passing up opportunities to behave morally. AGENCIES