BUT WHAT ELSE COULD I DO - CHOICE, IDENTITY AND A COGNITIVE-PERCEPTUAL THEORY OF ETHICAL POLITICAL-BEHAVIOR

What causes ethical political behavior? Traditional political explanat ions stress cost-benefit calculus, utility maximization, reason's domi nance of baser passions, or the conscious adoption of and adherence to certain moral values. In this article, I consider detailed narrative evidence that is not easily explained by any of these political theori es or by analogous psychological theories concerned with ethics as a d evelopmental process. This evidence comes from people's descriptions o f their actions toward Jews during World War II and includes testimony from both those who helped and those who did not help Jews. Analysis suggests two intriguing findings: (1) People in neither group felt the y had a choice to make. (2) Individuals in the two groups demonstrated vastly different perceptions of themselves in relation to others. The se findings suggest the outlines of a highly prelusive cognitive-perce ptual theory of ethical political behavior, one in which an actor's pe rception of self in relation to others both effectively delineates and sets the domain of choice options perceived as available, empirically and morally.