The Seven Deadly Sins at Work, Part 1

In this essay, I consider application of a basic concept of major religions--sin--to the study of work behavior. I suggest that one may consider the seven deadly sins of Christian tradition as basic dimensions of social behavior with relevance to career choice and adjustment to work. Individuals experiencing difficulties in work adjustment and performance may be failing to moderate their behavior on these seven behavioral dimensions. Career interventions to address such tendencies are suggested.

Approximately 55% of the world's population, or 3.3 billion individuals, are adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with Christians alone accounting for one-third of all people (Adherents.com, 2001). Due in large part to their size, these religions have an enormous impact on world affairs and the lives of their adherents. The psychological study of aspects of these religions-and Christianity in particular-may therefore be expected to help us better understand an appreciable portion of the lives of many people. However, the justification for studying aspects of these religions arises not only from their size. An understanding of the psychological basis of any one faith may generalize to all individuals, regardless of faith.

A common element across these three religions is the concept of sin. Within the Jewish tradition, sin is "rebellion against the one God who made all and to whom all are responsible. It is the violation of a relationship, a breach of contract, a betrayal of solemn treaty" (Meeks, 1993, p. 122). This basic notion of sin as being a disruption of the relationship between the individual and God continues throughout the subsequently developed Christian (McFadyen, 2000, p. 665) and Islamic faiths. This is not to say that formal definitions of sin would not differ across the faiths, or even across sects within the faiths. For example, many Christians (especially among more liberal sects) might claim that it is impossible to seriously violate or disrupt the quality of relationship between person and God, relegating the concept of sin to a minor role in the structure of religious beliefs. It is also probably fair to say that the more conservative sects (across all three religions) tend to provide relatively greater emphasis on the concept of sin.

In the remainder of this essay, the emphasis will be on the Christian concept of sin, although many features of the discussion should generalize to Jewish, Islamic, and other faiths. The following discussion will review the history and folk psychology of sin, with emphasis on the seven deadly (or capital) sins, describe each of these sins in some detail, and then turn to the questions to be addressed by research. I shall also discuss virtues, but only as they form complementary relations to sins. Although my focus shall be the psychological discussion of sin and virtue, I will not request of the reader any leaps of faith that are properly speaking theological or spiritual. My approach to the issue shall be primarily historical, descriptive, and theoretical, as would be the case for the introduction of many topics of interest in psychology.

In Christian discourse, the related concepts of sin, virtue, and perfectibility play a central role in the four Gospels and other works of the New Testament. In Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exhorts his audience to "be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48, in The Holy Bible). The early Christians therefore apparently worked hard to perfect themselves, and many of them seemed to believe that such perfection was possible to attain (Passmore, 1970, p. 68); this was before Augustine of Hippo (354-440) expounded the doctrine of original sin and the assertion that perfectibility was impossible for humans without special grace from God. At any rate, the early, pre-Augustinian church was akin (by means of a very generous analogy) to a network of self-help groups designed to identify imperfections--in the form of sins--and, once identified, shift the errant individual's activity (with group support) toward more virtuous directions. During the heyday of persecution, they organized into small cells that met regularly and often secretly. The order of worship included a period for self-disclosure and confession of sin (exomologesis), followed by announcement of penance, requests for forgiveness, and plans for restitution. A period of fellowship (koinonia) closed the meeting. Thus, public discussion of sin was a central requirement in the early church, and in large measure a central reason for its existence.

As originally enacted through such social means, sin thus became not only that which separates man from God, but also quite literally that which separates man from man, from the religious community of which the congregants were a part. As Bazyn (2002) put it, "sin, instead of bringing Adam and Eve together, isolates them and turns them against each other" (p. 17). The concept of sin within the Christian tradition matured in such an intensely social context, and the basic sins "selected" and identified through this process were the ones most likely to separate individuals from a closely functioning group.

Then the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and gave it privileged status in the Empire, thus swelling the ranks of Christians, and spurring the church to make itself more easily approachable to its new adherents. One of the major changes of this period was the replacement of public confession of sin (to the entire membership of a churches' gathered congregation) by private confession (to priests). The Council of Nicea (in 325) firmly established the practice of private confession, which gained impetus through the widespread influence of the monks of the Irish church in later centuries (Menninger, 1973, p. 26).

Perhaps driven by the opportunities of the new method of private penance and the obligation to rationalize the matching of misdeed and type of penance, Christian thinkers began to classify sins according to their nature and severity. Such efforts led to various lists of sins, the most famous being the seven deadly (or capital, or cardinal) sins, which dates back at least to Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-c. 405; see LeJay, 1999/1908) and John Cassian (360-435), codified by Pope Gregory I (also known as Gregory the Great, c. 540-604), and analyzed later by Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). These sins include pride, avarice (covetousness or greed), envy, wrath (anger), lust, gluttony (excessive appetite or overindulgence), and sloth (laziness, or accidie).

Various authors have also matched each of the seven deadly sins with their contrary virtues, whose practice might provide some protection against the seven deadly sins: humility against pride, generosity against avarice, kindness against envy, temperance against gluttony, chastity against lust, patience against wrath, and diligence against sloth. In particular, Prudentius (cited in The Seven Contrary Virtues, 2001) proposed this particular list of contending or contrary virtues in Psychomachia, or Battle for the Soul, (see Prudentius, Prudenti Psychomachia, for the preface in original Latin). Psychomachia proved influential as the earliest strong example of the allegorical poetry that become popular during the Middle Ages. In it, Prudentius represents each sin and virtue in allegorical fashion as a person. (For a late Medieval and more sophisticated approach to the same problem, see Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.) Prudentius' personification of the various sins and virtues thereby had a broad impact on both Medieval religion and literature.

Since the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian church has passed through Reformation and has expanded through much of the world, largely retaining the central position of sin within its theology. Discussions of the seven deadly sins remain a staple topic in contemporary sermons (usually with a focus on one sin per sermon). In addition, in literature and the arts, the concept of the seven deadly sins has held its ground (Bazyn, 2002), building on the Medieval work of Dante (in The Divine Comedy) and Chaucer, and scores of authors since, including a number of major authors in the past century (Pynchon et al., 1993; Wilson et al., 1962). Modern popular culture continues in the same vein, particularly through a number of films that make explicit use of the seven deadly sins, such as Seven (Sidaris, 1979). Thus, the seven deadly sins, although religious in origin, have extended their reach into popular and secular culture, through which they continue to inform an ongoing folk psychology. Indeed, the seven deadly sins may constitute one of the oldest, if not the oldest, systems of folk psychology in continuous use.

However, as most of the world has become increasingly secular in recent centuries, social scientists have (in general) not included religious constructs such as sin in their theories. There are some exceptions, all arising from a theoretical or clinical perspective. Menninger (1973), a psychiatrist, made the case for incorporation of the concept of sin in the work of psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals. He also argued for an expansion of the seven deadly sins to include additional ones, such as cruelty. Mowrer (1976; see Drakeford, 1967) proposed a theory of the damaging psychological effects of unacknowledged sin (particularly among Protestant Christians), and suggested as a remedy "integrity groups" that in many ways mirrored the procedures of the early Christian worship services discussed previously. Grant (1982) conceptualized the seven deadly sins as sins of misplaced childhood (sloth and gluttony), prolonged adolescence (wrath and lust), and exaggerated adulthood (avarice, envy, and pride). Campolo (1987/1989), a sociologist, has described sins as "attitudes, emotions, and states of mind [that] condition our behavior in ways that are destructive to ourselves and to those who are around us" (p. 9; see also Stafford, 1994, pp. 12-13). Most recently, Schimmel (1992/1997) argued that many of the "sins of tradition" (p. 4), and particularly the seven deadly sins, are psychological as much as anything else, and "are primarily concerned with what it means to be human and humane and the responsibilities that we have to fulfill if we want to be considered as such" (p. 4).

Continues with:

Part 2, Description of the Seven Deadly Sins Applied to Work
Part 3, Relation of Sin to Other Constructs, Applications to Career Interventions, References, Websites of Interest