On the Distinction between Unethical and Selfish Behavior

Does unethical behavior always represent selfish behavior? Consider the seminal dilemma that serves as the foundation for modern moral psychology: The wife of a man named Heinz was near death and desperate for a medicine that he could not afford (Kohlberg, 1963). To save her life, Heinz broke into a drugstore to steal the medicine. Kohlberg asked his subjects, “Should Heinz have stolen for his dying wife? Why or why not?” Whereas Kohlberg was interested in how people reasoned through this moral dilemma, we were instead struck by the fact that Heinz stole not to help himself, but to assist another person. Heinz might have acted unethically, but did he act selfishly? Or consider the contemporary case of Aaron Swartz. As a computer programmer, Swartz downloaded 4.8 million articles from the journal database JSTOR and made them publicly available. Although his action clearly violated computer and copyright laws, his alleged intention was “to place the material on the Internet so that it could be freely distributed around the entire globe” (Abelson, Diamond, Grosso, & Pfeiffer, 2013, p. 31). Oftentimes, to act unethically is to act selfishly. Indeed, the bulk of ancient Greek philosophy and modern moral psychology has studied how individuals resolve moral dilemmas in which “doing the right thing” and acting in one’s self-interest are in conflict (Bazerman & Gino, 2012). In fact, Plato (trans. 1997) himself believed that selfinterest lies at the root of all unethical behaviors: “the cause of each and every crime Is unethical behavior always selfish, and is selfish behavior always unethical?