On not Yielding to Temptation

Abstract

The notion of yielding to temptation has already been studied by ethnographers, sociologists, and morality researchers. Yet the situation is different in the area of social psychology. My review of the literature in that scope indicated the existence of two dominant research perspectives used in studies on the situation of giving in to temptation: the perspective related to resocialisation psychology, which discusses the notion in terms of behaviour, and the perspective of the psychology of morality. The results of the research which indicated that in most cases people are ready to, e.g. yield to the temptation of easy gains, despite their declared appreciation of the legal and ethical norms prohibiting the misappropriation of other people’s property, formed the starting point for my study. What else if not the legal framework can prevent a person from giving in to temptation when it arises? What role does our personality play in that? The article presents the results of a study into the correlation between personality-based variables and a person’s yielding to temptation.

Keywords

• personality
• temptation
• moral and legal legalism
• social norms