Do the Patriots cheat?

It’s halftime, but this is not about tonight’s game.  It is about the fact that if you are a fan of the Patriots, you not only do not believe the football was deflated, you think the League was picking on Tom Brady.  If you are almost anyone else, you believe Bill Belichick is an evil man who will stop at nothing to win and there is no way an experienced quarterback can’t tell if a football was deflated.

In an article in the Sports section of today’s Times, Juliet Macur points out that supporters of a team, or by implication, a candidate, will refuse to believe bad things about that team or candidate.  She examines the findings of Dr. David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, who studies group dynamics and group morality.  Here is what Dr. DeSteno found:

Just being part of a group, any group, is enough to excuse moral transgressions because in some way, you’re benefiting from it.  Your moral compass shifts.

DeSteno said that the closer you feel affiliated with a group, the more moral leniency you are willing to allow.  And while the article is about fans of sports teams, I think we all can make the leap to politics, and I’ll bet you can come up with some recent examples.