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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

[...] subjects were asked to indicate what part ofthe income of the other subject they wished to destroy.

No actual resources are being destroyed! And I suppose that they not even destroyed the money, because DESTROYING MONEY IS ILLEGAL, so whenever somebody asked me this kind of question, I would simply laugh at them and tell them "Sure, go ahead, destroy the money". I think that a lot of the subjects in this study knew this, so linking saying "Yes" to destruction to anything like "evil" is just utter nonsense to me.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Seems unlikely to me.

What I am bothered by more is the small amounts. People behave differently - with less thought - when the amounts at stake are small, as opposed to when they are high.

Still, looking at the graphs in the study article, it certainly does appear that evil is what's being demonstrated.

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