Scientists havelong argued whether hypocrisy is driven by emotion or by reason. In other moraljudgments, brain imaging shows, regions involved in feeling, not thinking,rule. The role of emotion in moral judgments has overturned the Enlightenmentnotion that our ethical sense is based on high-minded philosophy and cognition.That brings us to hypocrisy, which is almost ridiculously easy to bring out inpeople.

In a new study,psychologist David De Steno instructed 94 people to assign themselves and astranger of two tasks: an easy one or a hard one. Then everyone was asked, howfairly did you act? Next they watched someone else make the assignments, andjudged that person′s ethics. Selflessness was a virtual no-show: 87 Out of 94people opted forth easy task and gave the next guy the difficult one.Hypocrisy, however, showed up with bells on: every single person who made theselfish choice judged his own behavior less strictly--on average,4.5 vs3.1--than that of someone else who grabbed the easy task for himself.

The gap suggests howhypocrisy is possible. When we judge our own misbehaviors less harshly, DeSteno said, it may be because "we have this automatic, gut-level instinctto preserve our self-image. In our heart, maybe we′re just not as sensitive toour own immoral behaviors. People have learned that it pays to seem moral sinceit lets you avoid criticism and guilt. But even better is appearing moralwithout having to pay the cost of actually being moral-such as assigningyourself the tough job."

To test the role ofcognition in hypocrisy, De Steno had volunteers again assign themselves an easytask and a stranger a difficult one. But before judging the fairness of theiractions, they had to memorize seven numbers. This tactic keeps the brain′sthinking regions too tied up to think much about anything else, and it worked:hypocrisy vanished. People judged their own (selfish) behavior as harshly asthey did others′, strong evidence that moral hypocrisy requires

• A.is inevitable
• B.can be harnessedby will
• C.is by instinctivereaction
• D.is proof theEnlightenment notion