young people aren't just better looking...

Monkeys make decisions based on something that looks like cognitive dissonance:

Once a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M’s — say, red, blue and green — he was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue.

Explain it any way you want: we need to validate that past decision, or it's habit, or red is delicious. The point is we make the same decisions over and over again. Not because our unique souls tell us to, but simply because we made them in the past.

So innocence and corruption are serious character traits. If you've done something wrong in the past, you're going to do it next time you have the opportunity.

This is bad news for those of us who passed up $30,000 summer non-jobs because we didn't feel like interviewing.