We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch.
But research shows that everyone cheats a little—right up to the point
where they lose their sense of integrity.
Not too long ago, one of my students, named Peter, told me a story
that captures rather nicely our society’s misguided efforts to deal with
dishonesty. One day, Peter locked himself out of his house. After a
spell, the locksmith pulled up in his truck and picked the lock in about
a minute.
“I was amazed at how quickly and easily this guy was able to open the
door,” Peter said. The locksmith told him that locks are on doors only
to keep honest people honest. One percent of people will always be
honest and never steal. Another 1% will always be dishonest and always
try to pick your lock and steal your television; locks won’t do much to
protect you from the hardened thieves, who can get into your house if
they really want to. The purpose of locks, the locksmith said, is to
protect you from the 98% of mostly honest people who might be tempted to
try your door if it had no lock.
We tend to think that people are either honest or dishonest. In the
age of Bernie Madoff and Mark McGwire, James Frey and John Edwards, we
like to believe that most people are virtuous, but a few bad apples
spoil the bunch. If this were true, society might easily remedy its
problems with cheating and dishonesty. Human-resources departments could
screen for cheaters when hiring. Dishonest financial advisers or
building contractors could be flagged quickly and shunned. Cheaters in
sports and other arenas would be easy to spot before they rose to the
tops of their professions.
But that is not how dishonesty works. Over the past decade or so, my
colleagues and I have taken a close look at why people cheat, using a
variety of experiments and looking at a panoply of unique data sets—from
insurance claims to employment histories to the treatment records of
doctors and dentists. What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has
the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a
little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of
almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand,
we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as
possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest,
honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating,
not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society…..
From Dan Ariely's
Blog (his videos are also very interesting).
