Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [256]
More recently, Krebs has been conducting research on moral reasoning and behavior, his latest work being a neo-Darwinian explanation of the origin of morality, including altruism.103 Why would anyone spend so much time and effort in an area of psychology that is uncommonly contentious and, unlike mental testing, consumer psychology, and industrial psychology, offers no practical rewards? Developmentalists who concentrate on moral development have sundry motivations. Some were students in the idealistic 1960s and have been wedded to the study of prosocial behavior ever since; others are interested in morality from a religious viewpoint but find the psychological approach more realistic and productive; a handful of devoted moral development researchers are Holocaust survivors for whom the study of the humane side of humankind has been compensatory and healing.
And then there is Dennis Krebs, whose reasons are very special. Born in Vancouver in 1942, Krebs was the son of a carpenter and inventor of equipment to produce special effects on electric guitars. He was a top student and class president in junior high school and, though tall and skinny, a prize-winning amateur boxer. When he was fourteen, the family moved to the San Francisco area, where there were greater opportunities for his father in the electronic music business. The move was disastrous for young Dennis. In that milieu he rapidly changed from an upstanding youth to a juvenile delinquent. As he told the author of this book:
I went from a place where I was a Golden Boy to a culture I didn’t understand and where I didn’t fit in and people made fun of everything about me—my clothing, my accent, my behavior. Having been a very good boxer, I very quickly got into fights and developed a reputation for fights—which generated more fights, most of which I won, and as a result of which I became part of a gang.
He drifted into a pattern of skipping school, fighting, and shoplifting. Eventually he was caught and served first one, then a second, term of some months in a juvenile detention home. Released on parole, he stayed out of trouble for a while. But one night, after too little sleep and too much wine, he drove fast and erratically and was stopped by the police. They released him, but he said goodbye with a vulgar curse and roared away. He ignored the police chasing him with flashing lights and sirens, and ended up against a telephone pole. He was unhurt but was sentenced to the county jail. In a spirit of total defiance, he picked the lock on the bars at the window, slid down a rope made of sheets, and hitchhiked his way to Oregon. There he vanished into a remote logging camp, where he worked hard, thought a lot about his life, and made a plan:
I had gotten out of the context of delinquency and could see that I had to turn my life around. I decided to go back to Vancouver and go to the University of British Columbia. First I worked at a logging camp there for half a year, saving up enough money to start. Then I entered the university. By then I was in my twenties, a few years older than everyone else, and had this nagging sense of being behind, so I was an immensely intense and serious student, carrying extra courses and working part time.
I graduated in 1967, at 25, as the top student in psychology honors. I’d applied to Harvard, where I wanted to go on to a Ph.D., but when I was accepted, it hit me that I’d live in constant fear that somebody would expose me as an escaped convict. So I decided