When nothing is enough: greed and ethics

Greed is an insatiable desire for more, combined with feelings of dissatisfaction over what one currently has. It is a strong economic motive with many important implications for society. The authors discuss various ethical questions regarding greed, such as “Is greed as immoral as is often argued?”, and “What is the empirical evidence for claims that greed is bad (or good)?” In order to answer these questions, they first discuss what greed is and how it can be measured. Then they discuss evidence revealing that greed can corrupt people’s ethicality in various ways. They proceed by offering an explanation for how greed affects people’s perceptions of what is right and wrong, increases temptation of unethical benefits, places more weight on obtaining more, and steers people away from doing the right thing. In addition, greed can corrupt ethicality through the externalities imposed on others behaving greedily: seeing people taking more than they need may elicit greedy behaviors in the perceivers of this behavior. A broad range of empirical studies is discussed examining these questions. Finally, the authors synthesize all findings with regard to the relationship between greed and unethical behavior.