We’re bad at heart: research
WE TELL ourselves we are good people but are we really? Maybe not.
Australians are happy to download shows illegally, sneak the occasional supermarket grape, create a fake America iTunes profile for an app but are less likely to use a stolen credit card online.
All four of these are illegal - in the case of the iTunes work-around, it breaches a handful of international laws too - yet it can feel justified.
QUT research Paula Dootson said while the extreme ends of right and wrong might be clear cut, everything else was up for debate.
"As a society we can agree on the polar opposites, what is acceptable, what isn't, but when it comes to everything in between the line blurs on what is right and what is wrong," she said.
Ms Dootson said it might be about seeing the victim.
"If you took $10 out of someone's wallet, you're going to perceive that as being so much more wrong than if you take an equivalent $10 television show," she said.
"You can't see what happens when you take one grape, but it costs the supermarket $300 a week."
