Everyone seems to have an explanation for the NDP's shocking loss in the B.C. election.

I've offered up a few of my own—NDP Leader Adrian Dix's position on the Kinder Morgan pipeline didn't click with voters in the suburbs, Prince George, and Kamloops; his party's policies didn't engage the base; and the new candidates didn't have enough name recognition.

Others have blamed the defeat on Dix's lack of charisma, his unwillingness to go into the gutter to attack the B.C. Liberals, and his performance in the leaders debate.

But during the campaign, it seemed inconceivable that the NDP could lose.

Before the debate, one headline declared "New Poll Gives Dix 'Insurmountable' 22-Point Lead".

Back then, the consensus was that Dix's stance on the pipelines wouldn't get in the way of an NDP victory—and, in fact, would further marginalize the Greens.

So what happened? Did it all boil down to how voters perceived each leader's character?

Character isn't stable

This weekend, I've been reading the new paperback edition of a 2011 book called Out of Character: Surprising Truths About the Liar, Cheat, Sinner (and Saint) Lurking in All of Us. It's written by U.S. psychology professors David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo.

They make the provocative argument that character is not always stable—and swings are to be expected along the scale between vice and virtue.

It helps explain how former New York governor Eliot Spitzer ended up consorting with call girls in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington while at the same time leading a fight against corruption on Wall Street.

"Here was a man who had made ethics and integrity the hallmarks of his administration, a man who loudly and repeatedly decried the decline of good old American family values," DeSteno and Valdesolo write. "Yet Eliot Spitzer (or 'Client #9,' as he was to become known) would in one month's time be implicated in the most famous prositution case of the decade and immortalized in history books as the very paragon of moral hypocrisy."

Spitzer is not alone. Rush Limbaugh was an oxycodone addict as he was lambasting drug users; Republican senator Larry Craig was trying to pick up men in public restrooms while condemning Bill Clinton for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky; and numerous athletes who relied on performance-enhancing drugs have been quick to criticize steroids in sports.

Out of Character maintains there's always a tug-of-war within us for short-term versus long-term rewards. The authors liken this internal conflict to the classic Aesop's fable of the grasshopper and the ant. The grasshopper sings and plays all summer while the ant stores food for winter. Sometimes, we act like grasshoppers; on other occasions, we're ants.

And the public is quick to judge those who demonstrate the moral failings of a grasshopper—especially when it smacks of hypocrisy.

This is despite a new raft of scientific research, cited in the book, demonstrating that many of us are capable of bad behaviour when our brains are presented with certain emotional stimuli.

"As we've seen, none of is is a saint; we all err in our moral judgements every now and again," DeSteno and Valdesolo write. "And in fact, a little humility can be useful. As recent work by Sonya Sachdeva, Rumen Iliev, and Douglas Medin at Northwestern University has shown, having an outsized sense of moral superiority often gives people license to act less morally in the future."

The trio demonstrated this by asking a group of people to provide a set of words describing their character. Later, they were asked to donate to a charity.

Those who claimed they were of higher character gave significantly less than those who admitted having more moral flaws.

Dix was winning on character

During the B.C. election campaign, many people closest to the action felt that Dix was the candidate who was taking the high road.

He wouldn't criticize his opponents personally. He brought together his caucus. He promised that he would never blow $16 million of taxpayers' money on partisan political ads before an election.

Dix also wasn't tarred by the quick-wins scandal, in which Premier Christy Clark's staff used government resources to advance the B.C. Liberal party's efforts to win votes from minority communities.

And he certainly didn't spend $11 million of public funds for a Bollywood awards show designed to woo voters of Indian descent. Only a leader like Clark could demonstrate that level of chutzpah.

This was why Dix was the beneficiary of positive coverage by most media outlets leading up to the campaign—he was the man who couldn't lose.

Reading the columns of Vaughn Palmer, Daniel Veniez, and other commentators, it was clear that they felt Clark was finished, in part because she couldn't compete with Dix in terms of character. Prior to the election, Dix was portrayed as stable, sober, moderate, and reflective.

B.C. Liberals went on the offensive

In light of Dix's high standing in the polls, the B.C. Liberals had no choice but to bring Dix down a few notches to win the election.

Rather than giving him the benefit of the doubt by acknowledging that he made a mistake when he backdated a memo 14 years ago, the governing party tried to drive home the point that Dix's character was fundamentally flawed.

They accomplished this with ghastly looking black-and-white images of Dix in the "Concerned Citizens of B.C." ads.

They made the NDP leader appear to be some sort of moral leper. The initial images in these televised spots had him looking like a criminal.

As the authors of Out of Character point out, research by Simone Schnall and her colleagues has demonstrated how images that provoke disgust prime the intuitive system to become sickened by whatever comes next.

"In essence, that feeling of disgust bled over onto the next things that entered consciousness," DeSteno and Valdesolo declare about Schnall's experiments. "So when people were asked how they felt about a somewhat tenuous moral action, the answer was already there: it was disgusting. And condemn those actions they did."

This caricature of Dix completely contradicts the scientific research brought forth in Out of Character by DeSteno and Valdesolo.

In the eyes of the B.C. Liberals, Dix was a man frozen in time in one moment in 1999—nothing more needed to be said.

And it worked. I can't count the number of people I encountered who conveyed an impression of Dix as somehow morally inferior.

I would respond, "Well, no, I think he's actually quite an honest politician."

This was invariably greeted with a degree of skepticism.

Only after the election—when it was safe to do so—did Clark admit to having any respect for Dix.

He, on the other hand, often told audiences that he didn't think Clark was a bad person; he merely disagreed with her policies.

Perceptions of leadership also mattered

The other oft-heard refrain was that Clark appeared more like a premier.

Her pride and confidence on the campaign trail struck a chord with many voters, who felt that Dix wasn't quite brash enough for the top job.

Out of Character includes an intriguing section about UBC professor Jessica Tracy's research into how people recognize pride in others.

There are universal signs of pride, the authors point out, such as an expanded posture and a certain head tilt.

"What Tracy and her colleagues found time and again was that these physical expressions of pride automatically triggered associations with words such as dominant or important, which clearly indicated perceptions of high social status," DeSteno and Valdesolo write. "In other words, in the blink of an eye, without any other evidence to go on, those subtle physical cues are enough to make people see another person's character in a very specific light."

Just because people demonstrate pride doesn't make them likeable. But in the short term, such as over an election period, a certain amount of hubris can be useful, particularly if it is perceived as a sign of leadership. On this front, Clark was the clear winner.

Dix's essential humility helped him heal the divisions within his party caused by the resignation of former NDP leader Carole James.

His humility also served him well in gaining the respect of the press gallery and achieving a harmonious relationship with those he defeated in the NDP leadership race.

But ultimately, the attacks on his character by the B.C. Liberals and his lack of hubris are probably what did him in during the election campaign.

I have a hunch that Dix will be able to recover from this, notwithstanding all of those who are ready to write his political obituary.

Gary Doer lost three elections in Manitoba before leading his party to three consecutive majority governments. Gordon Campbell blew a lead in 1996, losing to a political leader, Glen Clark, who showed far more hubris on the campaign trail. Campbell, too, went on to win three majority governments.

Dix isn't stupid. And Christy Clark's hubris, like that of George W. Bush and many other politicians, will likely trip her up eventually.

We've just seen round one between Dix and Clark. The rematch, if it happens, could have a radically different result.