By Linda Grant, Wall Street Journal An excerpt: Life and Fate , by Vassily Grossman (1959) An old Russian woman, seeing a captured German soldier, raises a brick to throw at him, but at the last moment she instead hands him a piece of bread. The woman has no idea why she does this and in the years to...

3/11/11 By David Brooks, The New York Times We’re an overconfident species. Ninety-four percent of college professors believe they have above-average teaching skills. A survey of high school students found that 70 percent of them have above-average leadership skills and only 2 percent are below average...

By Rachel Rettner from msnbc . Other people's good deeds inspire the rest of us, study suggests. "The warm and fuzzy feelings you may experience after watching others perform virtuous deeds may in turn lead you to act altruistically as well, according to a new study based on the results of two...

By Liisa Myyrya, Soile Juujaumlrvi and Kaija Pesso The aim of this study was to clarify the relationships between empathy variables, personal values and moral reasoning. The impact of empathic concern, perspective taking and personal values measured by the Portrait Value Questionnaire on moral schemas...