People overwhelmingly soft when they have to make the hard decisions

Science Daily.com presents a fascinating study about the choices we make when confronted by a dilemma: Choosing fairness or choosing efficiency.

The results: People overwhelmingly choose fairness as a measure of justice as opposed to efficiency.

What's even more salient is that people in the study were placed in a position to directly affect people. This direct effect pushes people toward fairness as a metric.

The underlying rationale for me is that it's easy to be a hard-ass when you're not the one having to do the hard-ass things, but when you're actually put in control of being the hard-ass, you'll most likely NOT be a hard-ass.

Says a lot about those law and order types. They talk a good game, but chances are they would be pussies like the rest of us.