The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

* This was the first time that I was paid a lot by the hour, and I was intrigued by how I started to view many decisions in terms of “work hours.” I figured that for one hour of work I could buy a really fancy dinner and that for a few more I could buy a new bicycle. I suspect that this is an interesting way to think about what we should and should not purchase, and one day I might look into this.

* If your ereading device does not support color, this won’t work – go to the online color version at http://danariely.com/stroop/

* The market for fake goods, of course, ranges far beyond Chinatown and New York. After gathering momentum for more than forty years, the phenomenon is now a formidable affair. Counterfeiting is illegal almost everywhere on our planet, though the severity of the punishment varies from country to country, as does people’s view of the morality of buying counterfeits. (See Frederick Balfour, “Fakes!” BusinessWeek, February 7, 2005.)

* The rumor about this shipment quickly traveled around Duke, and I became popular among the fashion-minded crowd.

* You might wonder if receiving counterfeits as gifts would have the same effect as choosing a counterfeit product for ourselves. We wondered the same thing and tested this question in another experiment. It turned out that it doesn’t matter whether we acquire a counterfeit product by our own choice or not; once we have a fake product, we are more likely to cheat.

* You might wonder if people are aware of the downstream consequences of counterfeits. We tested this too and found that they are unaware of these effects.

* We used this type of SAT-like question instead of our standard matrices because we expected that such questions would lead more naturally to the feeling of “I knew it all along” and to self-deception.

* The story was written up by Kubrick’s assistant, Anthony Frewin, in Stop Smiling magazine, and it was the basis of the film Colour Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich as Conway.

* I have nothing against the Ford Taurus, which I am sure is a fine automobile; it just wasn’t as exciting a car as I’d imagined myself driving.

* I suspect that there is a connection between dishonesty and traveling in general. Perhaps it’s because when traveling the rules are less clear, or maybe it has to do with being away from one’s usual setting.

* The smart thing would have been to lead the students through the oath at the start of every lecture, and maybe this is what I will do next time.

* I suspect that companies that adapt the ideology of maximizing shareholder value above all else can use this motto to justify a broad range of misbehaviors, from financial to legal to environmental cheating. The fact that the compensation of the executives is linked to the stock price probably only increases their commitment to “shareholder value.”

* Another fuzzy rule is the quaint-sounding “principle of prudence,” according to which accountants should not make things appear rosier than they actually are.

* Are dentists doing this on purpose, and do the patients know that they are being punished for their loyalty? Most likely it is not intentional, but whether conscious or not, the problem remains.

* Based on these results, we could speculate that people who work for ideological organizations such as political groups and not-for-profits might actually feel more comfortable bending moral rules—because they are doing it for a good cause and to help others.