People cheat when…
Brent Tantillo • November 3, 2009 • Uncategorized
They are carrying a fake Louis Vuitton handbook or wearing a knock-off Rolex it seems, according to a best-selling book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely of Duke University featured in this BusinessWeek article. In one of Ariely’s most recent studies he found:
His most recent experiment—on deception’s slippery slope—was inspired by some Prada swag he got after speaking at a conference last year. Carrying a genuine luxury bag made the fashion-challenged economist “feel different,” he says, leading him to wonder about the psychological effects of sporting a counterfeit.
In an experiment involving 500 people, he found that subjects who knowingly wore fake Chloé sunglasses later cheated more than twice as often on an unrelated task than those assigned to wear the authentic designer goods. “If you take that first step, your self-image changes,” he says. “It becomes easier to do the next dishonest thing.”
Ariely’s studies show that people are more likely to cheat if they are stepped removed from the cash payoff, which is why managers are more willing to pad expense account reports when their assistants prepare the report than when they do it. Also, it’s the reason why financial derivatives have gotten a bad rap because their value is based on other financial assets.
So how do you prevent cheating — ah, go figure, the Ten Commandments can help.
In one variation, testing participants first on their recall of the Ten Commandments eliminated cheating on the math scores. Then there’s the study Ariely did with an auto insurer: Car owners who signed their names at the top of the insurance application, he found, were more honest about their driving habits, even though higher annual mileage meant higher premiums.
“We all like to think of cheaters as evil people,” Ariely says. But deterrence can be as simple as reminding people of their better selves. His advice to the IRS for next tax season: Move the signature line to the top of the form.
Comments
Leave a Reply
