Any action resulting in a more significant negative consequence than positive consequence. Because actions are measured by their consequences.
Wait a minute! Doesn’t wrongdoing just mean “crime”?
Not exactly. That’s because not all crimes are wrong — they’re just against the rules. Dumpster diving is illegal in some parts of the world, yet it has the positive consequences of providing food to hungry humans and efficiently recycling waste, with no negative consequences. Moreover, not all legal behaviours have a positive effect! Calling someone a tanglebutt (or worse) is quite legal, but it’s more likely to have a negative effect than a positive one. Laws should ideally stand against the things that are most widely accepted as wrong, but our legislative systems are currently just as flawed as our behaviours. More on crime and law in a subsequent article.
The definition of wrongdoing is therefore purely dependent on your definitions of “negative” and “positive”. But many of us agree on the big stuff: harming people’s bodies is negative. Gaining resources is positive. Trading useless resources that are beneficial to another party in kind is very positive.
To objectively to determine the wrongness or rightness of a given action there’s a complex analysis to be done on any behaviour, involving the negative and positive impact of all known consequences. We usually handle that just based on how we feel about stuff.
We’re pretty good at that.
But it’s interesting to understand why wrongdoing perpetuates. Wouldn’t it be good if everyone, before taking an action, considered in advance the positive and negative consequences of that action and based the decision to act or not act or modify the action based on maximising positive effect? Yes it would.
In fact we would call it Utopia.
But we don’t have time for the decision analysis it would take to achieve utopia. Until that’s automated we’ll carry on with the trial and error, to gain decision informing data a hell of a lot faster than premeditative research would yield.
But until we can automate the information acquisition requisite for exclusively positive-effect decision making (also called “rightdoing”), we are going to continue accepting a bit of wrongdoing in our own and others’ behaviour.
Like its counterpart rightdoing, the consequences of wrongdoing can affect others. Those to whom rightdoing is done are called benefactors. Those to whom wrongdoing is done are called victims.
Also like rightdoing, wrongdoing can carry consequences of replication. Another way of saying that is:
Every wrongdoer was a victim first.
Here’s the diagram of how it works.
There’s actually a lot you can do about it. In fact, when you’re victimised, the only part that’s out of your control is the victimisation and suffering. Yes, those are done to you. Everything after that is over to you, and you can act or fail to act as you please.
Most victimisations result in a resolution. That can take many forms. It might be grand, like the breakthrough result after years of therapy. Or it could be as dull as “getting over” the event. The definition of a resolution is making the choice not to have your behaviour and identity negatively affected by the victimisation.
If that fails, however, the result is bad. That result means that an act of wrongdoing has had such an impact on the victim that it has resulted in (perhaps consciously untraceable) behaviour and identity changes resulting in more negative-result behaviours being undertaken than would have been undertaken had the victim not been victimised.
What do I mean by “untraceable”? Can the causation of wrongdoing be traced back to earlier experiences of victimisation? Or more generally, can the causation of any human behaviour be traced back to its causative experiences?
In an adequate therapeutic environment, theoretically yes.
In our current era we rarely bother. It would be useful, but much like doing premeditative research in decision making, it currently fits in the too hard basket.
But there’s good news.
Like any field of science, psychology is making progress. Rehabilitation is on the increase, and the fundamental tenet of it...
understanding why humans behave the way they behave
Utopia, as we defined it above, is not yet within reach. Not even close.
But it is in this direction.