The head of the Institute for Behavioral Economics and Inequality (briq) is a professor of economics at the University of Bonn.
(Photo: Henry Fair / briq [M])
Dusseldorf “Why is the world the way it is? Full of pain, suffering and lies?” Armin Falk asks this on the first pages of his book entitled “Why is it so difficult to be a good person”.
The 55-year-old gives the answer in the new podcast episode of Handelsblatt Rethink Work: “because people are not moral superheroes”.
Falk is a professor of economics at the University of Bonn and a behavioral economist. He researches “the completely normal behavior of completely normal people”, as he says, also with the help of experiments.
Falk talks about the moral stumbling blocks that lurk everywhere in everyday life. These can be found, for example, at work, for example because responsibility in teams becomes diffuse. He also talks about the many tricks and stories that people use to sugarcoat what they do – even when it harms others.
And he explains how personality, situation, and feelings like envy play a role in how people behave.
According to the behavioral economist, there is “good envy” that motivates you and makes you more productive: for example, if someone has a faster career because of this feeling. On the other hand, there is “evil envy”, which is destructive. “Then I don’t ask myself what I have to do to be able to have it. But how I can ruin it for the other person,” explains Falk.
Research in Germany and over 70 other countries has also shown that there are differences between the sexes. “Women are more social on average,” says Falk. In general, however, one cannot say that “man is good or bad”. That is nonsense.
However, research helps to understand the conditions under which it becomes more likely that a person will behave well or badly. Falk says: “I think this is a productive approach to the question of how we can make this world a little bit better.”
More: Listen to the previous episode of Rethink Work here.