(1) In a post that engages with one of mine, Chris riffs on a theme he is fond of, namely that situational factors explain a lot about people's conduct. He observes, as being one of the 'two big messages' about this, that...
... people's behaviour is shaped less by their nature and more by social context than we think.
This more-and-less way of talking is not illuminating here. This is why. You put a couple of giraffes in a room full of books and they will choose none of them to read. You offer your dog the alternatives flying and not-flying, by throwing it from a sixth-floor window, and it won't choose, it will just drop. You put food before a starving man and hope that he won't eat it, and in nearly all cases he will eat it. These examples may appear fanciful, but they are designed to establish the point that, whatever the influence of social context, people's natures are absolutely fundamental to how they behave. There are some behaviours that they can't engage in because they lack the relevant capacities. There are other behaviours that they won't engage in even if they can because they have dispositions that restrain them from doing so.
It is a standard leftist trope to suggest that certain bad or putatively bad behaviours are all down to social influences and have nothing to do with human nature. That is a futile plea. If, for example, human beings have so often enjoyed the exercise of unjust power over others, enjoyed taking advantage of them, exploited them, and shown themselves particularly adept at reconciling this with their consciences, this cannot be all down to situational factors. If there were no tendencies, impulses, within human nature tempting people in these directions they wouldn't choose them. Equally, the speed with which, when the restraints of civilized law are removed, murder and mayhem ensue, suggests that there are inner human impulses that are other than benign and cooperative. And so on.
(2) Chris expresses himself amazed that I should be amazed about the team leader seizing the fourth cookie. Don't I know about Zimbardo and such? I am tempted to respond with the James Coburn line from Charade: 'Now... you listen to me - my mama didn't raise no stupid children'. I am familiar not only with Zimbardo, but also with Milgram, with Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, and much much more of that ilk. It shows, indeed, the importance of context and situation. But what it also shows is that there are human propensities that need to be restrained, as well as that some people will not do, in any circumstances, the evils which others will. So situation isn't everything. And our natures, both biological and as formed by culture, education, morality, matter enormously.
Chris simply misconstrues what I was amazed by. This wasn't the effect of situational factors on people's conduct. It was, rather, the specific idea that in the circumstances described in Michael Lewis's anecdote, grabbing that cookie would be as general as he suggests it is. I doubt it. Indeed, on the basis of emails I have since received, I have come to doubt the strict accuracy of Lewis's story.