Comments on “The Law of Good People”: Regulating Justified Dishonesty

The basic premise of Feldman’s seminal book “the Law of Good People”1 is that the ordinary unethicality of individuals who see themselves as good people is the most common type of behavior that legal policy makers should attempt to regulate. This article addresses three central issues discussed in his book from my perspective as a social psychologist. The first is why people who commit unethical behavior fail to update their moral ledger and continue to perceive themselves as good and moral. I describe the main building blocks of the ethical dissonance model2 that characterizes the inconsistency between the aspiration toto uphold one’s moral self-image and the temptation to profit from unethical behavior. I show how people employ a range of self-serving biases and creative justifications to benefit from dishonest behavior and at the same time maintain a positive moral image of themselves as good people. The second question...