To cheat is human
The Straits Times
By
David Brooks
IN THE 1970s, the gift shop at the Kennedy Centre for the
Performing Arts was an informal affair. It was staffed by about 300
mostly elderly volunteers, and there were cash drawers instead of
registers. The problem was that of the shop's US$400,000 in annual
revenue, somebody was stealing US$150,000.
Mr Dan Weiss, the gift shop's manager at the time, now the
president of Lafayette College, investigated. He discovered that there
wasn't one big embezzler. Bunches of people were stealing. Dozens of
elderly art lovers were each pilfering a little.
That's one of the themes of behavioural economist Dan Ariely's
new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Nearly everybody cheats,
but usually only a little. Professor Ariely and his colleagues gave
thousands of people 20 number problems. When they tackled the problems
and handed in the answer sheet, people got an average of four correct
responses. When they tackled the problems, shredded their answer sheets
and self-reported the scores, they said they got six correct responses.
They cheated a little, but not a lot.
That's because most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can
cheat a little and still keep that 'good person' identity. Most people
won't cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about
themselves.
Prof Ariely, who is one of the most creative social scientists
on the planet, invented other tests to illustrate this phenomenon. He
put cans of Coke and plates with dollar bills in the kitchens of college
dorms. People walked away with the cans of Coke, but not the dollar
bills, which would have felt more like stealing.
He had one blind colleague and one sighted colleague take taxi
rides. The drivers cheated the sighted colleague by taking long routes
much more often than they cheated the blind one, even though she would
have been easier to mislead. They would have felt guilty cheating a
blind woman.
Prof Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more
than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might
call the Good Person Construct, and the moral calculus it implies. For
the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified
themselves fundamentally as depraved sinners. In this construct, sin is
something you fight like a recurring cancer - part of a daily battle
against evil.
But these days, people are more likely to believe in their
essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to
balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try
to manage the moral pluses and minuses and keep their overall record in
positive territory.
In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give
myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch
and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I
look at my overall life, I see that I'm still a good person.
The Good Person isn't shooting for perfection any more than
most dieters are following their diet 100 per cent. It's enough to be
workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good
guy.
Obviously, though, there's a measurement problem. You can buy a
weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can't
buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our
awesome capacities for rationalisation and self-deception, most of us
are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind
passenger because I'm a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one
because she probably has too much money anyway.
The key job in the Good Person Construct is to manage your
rationalisations and self-deceptions to keep them from getting
egregious.
Prof Ariely suggests you reset your moral gauge from time to
time. Your moral standards will gradually slip as you become more and
more comfortable with your own rationalisations. So step back. Break
your patterns and begin anew. This is what Yom Kippur - the Jewish Day
of Atonement - and confessionals are for.
Next time you feel tempted by something, recite the Ten
Commandments. A small triggering nudge at the moment of temptation, Prof
Ariely argues, is more effective than an epic sermon meant to
permanently transform your whole soul.
I'd add that you really shouldn't shoot for goodness, which is
so vague and forgiving. You should shoot for rectitude. We're mostly
unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to
some exterior or social standards.
Prof Ariely is doing social science experiments and trying to
measure behaviour. But I thought his book was an outstanding
encapsulation of the good-hearted and easy-going moral climate of the
age.
A final thought occurred to me. As we go about doing our Good
Person moral calculations, it might be worth asking: Is this good
enough? Is this life of minor transgressions refreshingly realistic,
given our natures, or is it settling for mediocrity?
NEW YORK TIMES