Moral disengagement essentially allows people to behave in ways that, at another moment, in a different mood, that same person would never consider. For years, research has shown again and again that moral disengagement influences how people will behave in a given situation. But now, in a chicken-and-egg twist, Shu and her team have shown that it works both ways: How people behave influences the moral beliefs they have about their behavior. Moral disengagement is the result of unethical behavior, they have now shown, not just the cause…

As a whole, Shu and her colleagues’ study is further reason to doubt that people have an unbudging, ingrained ethical compass guiding their every action. Indeed, ignoring that compass seems to make us forget we have it at all, at least temporarily.