"Moral rebels speak up in all types of situations – to tell a bully to cut it out, to confront a friend who uses a racist slur, to report a colleague who engages in corporate fraud. What enables some people to call out bad behavior, even if doing so may have costs?
First, moral rebels generally feel good about themselves. They tend to have high self-esteem and to feel confident about their own judgment, values and ability. They also believe their own views are superior to those of others, and thus that they have a social responsibility to share those beliefs.
Moral rebels are also less socially inhibited than others. They aren’t worried about feeling embarrassed or having an awkward interaction. Perhaps most importantly, they are far less concerned about conforming to the crowd. So, when they have to choose between fitting in and doing the right thing, they will probably choose to do what they see as right."
"Finally, moral rebels need particular skills and practice using them. One study found that teenagers who held their own in an argument with their mother, using reasoned arguments instead of whining, pressure or insults, were the most resistant to peer pressure to use drugs or drink alcohol later on. Why? People who have practiced making effective arguments and sticking with them under pressure are better able to use these same techniques with their peers. .... It is possible to develop the ability to stand up to social pressure. In other words, anyone can learn to be a moral rebel."
“What right does any man have to shake the taken-for-granted beliefs of others? Why educate young people to see the precariousness of things they had assumed to be absolutely solid? Why introduce them to the subtle erosion of critical thought? .... the taken-for-granted are far too solidly entrenched in consciousness to be that easily shaken by, say, a couple of sophomore courses. ‘Culture shock’ is not induced that readily.”
“We have already summarized some of the "evidence that people are inclined to offer dispositionist explanations for behavior instead of situationist ones, and that they make inferences about the characteristics of actors when they would do well to make inferences instead about the characteristics of situations ...." We have also suggested that this fundamental attribution error has not spared the professional and credentialed minds of economists and legal economists-hence, our repeated emphasis on the fact that they too are human.
Regarding the first question, our gun-to-the-head example makes clear that our dispositionism does occasionally give way to situationism. The example is particularly apt because it appears that we rarely see situation unless the situation is thrust upon us in the form of another hard-to-miss actor such as a person wielding a gun.
Even a very obvious, controllable, and tangible situational influence-money-is commonly overlooked in favor of dispositionist explanations of behavior. The effects of financial incentives on lay people tend to be understood in terms of stable dispositional proclivities.”Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations for their behavior. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are".
