A new study from Columbia University says that the way we perceive others people’s bad behaviour – as innate or potentially changeable – impacts our willingness to cut them some slack. So, how willing we are to forgive or overlook their behaviour depends on whether we consider them merely behaving badly or basically bad to the core. The study, published in the ‘Journal of Experimental Psychology: General’, says that adults are generous towards those whose badness has an excuse and hence presume that the person has the potential to change, but are hard on those who they think are basically bad people. Children, however, make no such difference.