In his book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, Dan Ariely attempts to answer the question: “is dishonesty largely restricted to a few bad apples or is it a more widespread problem?”
He concludes that we’re mostly honest as long as the conditions are right:
We are going to take things from each other if we have a chance … many people need controls around them for them to do the right thing. … [T]he locksmith told Peter that locks are on doors only to keep honest people honest. “One percent of people will always be honest and never steal,” the locksmith said. “Another one percent will always be dishonest and always try to pick your lock and steal your television. And the rest will be honest as long as the conditions are right—but if they are tempted enough, they’ll be dishonest too. Locks won’t protect you from the thieves, who can get in your house if they really want to. They will only protect you from the mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door if it had no lock.”
We’re ok cheating, as long as its just a little and unnoticeable.
as long as we cheat by only a little bit, we can benefit from cheating and still view ourselves as marvelous human beings. This balancing act is the process of rationalization, and it is the basis of what we’ll call the fudge factor theory.
Something that stood out for me was the chapter on the relationship between creativity and dishonesty. According to Ariely, the link between creativity and dishonesty is not as straightforward as we might think — The more creative we are the better we are at rationalising dishonest behavior.
We may not always know exactly why we do what we do, choose what we choose, or feel what we feel. But the obscurity of our real motivations doesn’t stop us from creating perfectly logical-sounding reasons for our actions, decisions, and feelings.
… We all want explanations for why we behave as we do and for the ways the world around us functions. Even when our feeble explanations have little to do with reality. We’re storytelling creatures by nature, and we tell ourselves story after story until we come up with an explanation that we like and that sounds reasonable enough to believe. And when the story portrays us in a more glowing and positive light, so much the better.
We don’t make rational decisions. Our choices are (mostly) not based on explicit preferences and thought through. Rather, we follow our intuition with “mental gymnastics” to justify our actions. Conveniently this allows us to get what we want and maintain our ego. We tell ourselves that we are acting rationally. The real difference Ariely found between more and less creative people is the creativity of the justifications. “The most creative we are,” he writes, “the more we are able to come up with good stories that help us justify our selfish interests.”
This really comes down to our storytelling nature:
We’re storytelling creatures by nature, and we tell ourselves story after story until we come up with an explanation that we like and that sounds reasonable enough to believe. And when the story portrays us in a more glowing and positive light, so much the better.
The idea that worries Ariely the most is the trend toward cashless payments. “From all the research I have done over the years,” he writes, “the idea that worries me the most is that the more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips.”
One factor that Ariely didn’t contemplate that I think it is important is how our environment — whether we’re in an environment of abundance or scarcity — affects our moral compass. Intuitively, I think it’s a lot easier to rationalise moral transgressions in an environment of scarcity than one of abundance.
“Essentially, we cheat up to the level that allows us to retain our self-image as reasonably honest individuals.”
— Dan Ariely
The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves is worth reading in its entirety.