This TED Talk features psychologist and management professor Dolly Chug recorded live at TED at BCG 2018.

So a friend of mine was riding in a taxi to the airport the other day.

And on the way, she was chatting with a taxi driver.

And he said to her with total sincerity, I can tell you are a really good person.

And when she told me this story later, she said she couldn't believe how good it made her feel,

that it meant a lot to her. Now, that may seem like a strong reaction for my friend to the words

of a total stranger, but she's not alone. I'm a social scientist. I study the

psychology of good people. And research in my field says many of us care deeply about feeling

like a good person and being seen as a good person. Now, your definition of good person and your

definition of good person and maybe the taxi driver's definition of good person. Now, your definition of good person and your definition of good person and

maybe the taxi driver's definition of good person, we may not all have the same definition.

But within whatever our definition is, that moral identity is important to many of us.

Now, if somebody challenges it, like they question us, for a joke we tell,

or maybe they say our workforce is homogenous or a slippery business expense,

we go into red zone defensiveness a lot of the time.

I mean, sometimes we call out all the ways in which we help people from marginalized groups,

where we donate to charity,

or the hours we volunteer to nonprofits, we work to protect that good person identity. It's important

to many of us. But what if I told you this? What if I told you that our attachment to being good people

is getting in the way of us being better people?

What if I told you that our definition of good person is so narrow,

it's scientifically impossible to meet?

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