Chapter 1: What is the tension between being moral and authentic?
neutral zone, where every perspective gets diplomatic immunity. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.
Let's talk about a deceptively simple question. Is being good, like being a good person, the same as being your true self? Like what if being your authentic self means doing something selfish?
Chapter 2: How can being authentic conflict with moral obligations?
When morality and being authentic clash and pull us in different directions, what happens? We are here to discuss that with professor of psychology at Cornell University, Jordan Wiley. Jordan, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me, David. I'm excited to chat.
Chapter 3: What role does art play in exploring authenticity?
So let's dig in. A lot of people get told, be true to yourself. Like you got to be your most authentic self. But what if that means doing something fundamentally, I don't know, self-involved, fundamentally selfish, something that may not be morally good?
Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting question and it's at the heart of what we were interested in.
Chapter 4: What are some real-life examples of authenticity leading to moral dilemmas?
There does seem to be some tension between being like a moral person in the world all of the time. Morality is full of rules and obligations that we have and being like maybe true to yourself and who you are. Some of that seems like it requires that you kind of like break the rules a little bit here and there.
And we're certainly not condoning, you know, rule breaking as like, you know, the only way people can feel they're, you know, true to who they are. But I do think that that tension suggests that, like, maybe there are some spaces that actually help support us feeling like our true self, some spaces where rule breaking and bending conventions are more natural.
Chapter 5: How do people perceive the relationship between morality and authenticity?
And so we've thought a lot about that. the role of art and the aesthetic domain in providing like a safe space for you to like kind of explore the edges of your personality, which might kind of clash with everyday moral obligations.
Like being on the radio every day. I'm just saying that for a friend that has nothing to do with me. What are some examples of people who, when they blossom into their most authentic self, they end up behaving in ways that maybe aren't morally good?
Chapter 6: What findings did the research reveal about people's values?
Yeah. So I think that there are a ton of examples in the art world in particular. So the example that I really like to use is the example of Gauguin. So somebody who... If you're not familiar, Gauguin is a famous painter who had a family, you know, so many moral obligations surrounding, you know, family life and children and, you know, spouses.
Chapter 7: How do artists perceive their authenticity compared to moral professionals?
And he sort of pushed those things aside and then went to French Tahiti and, you like developed his art into something that like previously it just, it didn't quite reach. And in doing so, you know, did a lot of morally bad things, including just abandoning one's family. So this is an example of like really pushing aside.
And then it's, you know, at least it's my intuition that like in exploring his art in that way, he was really exploring, you know, like truly who he was deep down and his art really benefited from it.
Now, when people hear authenticity, I think they sometimes think like that means good, you know? What does your research suggest when you hear someone say they're being their true self around like morality?
Yeah, so it is the case that most people and a lot of research has found that being good is like one way to achieve the feeling of being one's true self. Because a lot of people have the belief that humans are sort of like deep, deep down all pretty morally good. And so that's one path to like feeling that feeling of authenticity is being good and nice to other people.
But one of the things we were interested in is, you know, what are some other spaces? Again, because it's my intuition that like when we really think about the moral domain and all of the tensions and obligations that exist there, it doesn't like immediately seem obvious to me that that's like the perfect place for proliferation of your like true, authentic, good self.
And so the art space, again, is like just another avenue, not the only one, certainly. And in our empirical work, we find that people think being good is like is a really good way to find one's true self. Just art and some of these like rule bendy conventions are another path that sometimes are equal, sometimes are less and actually sometimes beat out what it feels like to be like good.
Let's talk a little bit about your experiment. You asked participants to create a pie chart or divide a pie chart to represent how much time they want to allocate to areas in their lives. Walk me through that a little bit and tell me what we can conclude based on it.
Yeah, so again, we're thinking a lot about the kinds of things that make life meaningful and whether morality is chief among them. And there's reasons to think that it should be and that it is.
There's work in philosophy, for example, that suggests that morality is, and empirical work in psychology that morality is, and work in philosophy that suggests even that it should be the thing that people care about the most. And so we just wanted to see what everyday people think.
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