C H A P T E R 6

The Ethical Mind

IN WHAT KIND OF A WORLD would we like to live if we knew neither our standing nor our resources in advance? Speaking for myself—but, I trust, not only for myself—I would like to live in a world characterized by “good work”: work that is excellent, ethical, and engaging. For more than ten years, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and I have been exploring the nature of good work; in particular, we and our colleagues have sought to determine which factors contribute to good work, which militate against it, and how best to increase the incidence of good work. Because our findings illuminate the ethical mind, I shall describe them in some detail.

As the founding social scientists of the late nineteenth century ...

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