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The New Science of Temptation

from Scientific American

The power to resist temptation has been extolled by philosophers, psychologists, teachers, coaches, and mothers. Anyone with advice on how you should live your life has surely spoken to you of its benefits.

... Of course, this assumes that our natural urges are a thing to be resisted--that there is a devil inside, luring you to cheat, offend, err, and annoy. New research has begun to question this assumption.

A new brain imaging study by Josh Greene and Joe Paxton at Harvard University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what separates the well-behaved from the poorly-behaved might not be the ability to control your temptations but rather what kind of temptations you have.