ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes two general messages: One message is that when the human organism is in homeostasis (such as when the human being is not busy with coping with personal uncertainty or not recovering from other salient self-threatening information), it can be expected that people will react in a relatively calm way to fair and unfair events and show composed reactions to other events that bolster or violate their social-cultural norms and values. Thus, the regulated and homeostatic self leads to calmer, better composed human beings. In the second part of this chapter, however, the author puts forward the hypothesis that the well-regulated self may also lead to less desirable reactions. That is, he proposes that a disinhibited self often is needed to overcome people’s inhibition to intervening in moral dilemmas and that behavioral disinhibition therefore may have positive effects on how people respond to these dilemmas. Thus, the take-home message of this chapter is twofold: Behavioral disinhibition may be bad, except when it is not. At least sometimes, behavioral disinhibition can be conducive for the greater good.
