The Complexity of Good Intentions

What’s wrong with donating to charity for the tax write-off? Should we think less of people who do volunteer work to pad their resumes? And why is Angela stopping women in public parks to compliment them?

• SOURCES:
  • Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  • Geoffrey Goodwin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Jon Huntsman, politician, diplomat, and businessman.
  • Immanuel Kant, 18th-century German philosopher.
  • Emrys Westacott, professor of philosophy at Alfred University.

• RESOURCES:
  • "How Inferred Motives Shape Moral Judgements," by Ryan W. Carlson, Yochanan E. Bigman, Kurt Gray, Melissa J. Ferguson, and M. J. Crockett (Nature Reviews Psychology, 2022).
  • "Just 2 Minutes of Walking After a Meal Is Surprisingly Good for You," by Rachel Fairbank (The New York Times, 2022).
  • "Psychological Egoism," by Emrys Westacott (ThoughtCo, 2020).
  • "A Meta-Analytic Review of Moral Licensing," by Irene Blanken, Niels van de Ven, and Marcel Zeelenberg (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2015).
  • "Selfish or Selfless? On the Signal Value of Emotion in Altruistic Behavior," by Alixandra Barasch, Emma E. Levine, Jonathan Z. Berman, and Deborah A. Small (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014).
  • "Greenwashing — the Deceptive Tactics Behind Environmental Claims," by the United Nations.

• EXTRAS:
  • "Giving It Away," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "How Can We Get More Virtue and Less ‘Virtue Signaling’?" by No Stupid Questions (2020).
  • "Does Doing Good Give You License to Be Bad?" by Freakonomics Radio (2018).