The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

Everyone nodded and laughed, appreciating his enthusiastic, non-buttoned-down approach.

“Is anybody here rich?” he asked. “I know I am, but you college students aren’t. No, you are all poor. But that’s going to change through the power of CHEATING! Let’s do it!”

He then recited the names of some infamous cheaters, from Genghis Khan through the present, including a dozen CEOs, Alex Rodriguez, Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart, and more. “You all want to be like them,” he exhorted. “You want to have power and money! And all that can be yours through cheating. Pay attention, and I will give you the secret!”

With that inspiring introduction, it was now time for a group exercise. He asked the students to close their eyes and take three deep, cleansing breaths. “Imagine you have cheated and gotten your first ten million dollars,” he said. “What will you do with this money? You! In the turquoise shirt!”

“A house,” said the student bashfully.

“A HOUSE? We rich people call that a MANSION. You?” he said, pointing to another student.

“A vacation.”

“To the private island you own? Perfect! When you make the kind of money that great cheaters make, it changes your life. Is anyone here a foodie?”

A few students raised their hands.

“What about a meal made personally by Jacques Pépin? A wine tasting at Châteauneuf-du-Pape? When you make enough money, you can live large forever. Just ask Donald Trump! Look, we all know that for ten million dollars you would drive over your boyfriend or girlfriend. I am here to tell you that it is okay and to release the handbrake for you!”

By that time most of the students were starting to realize that they were not dealing with a serious role model. But having spent the last ten minutes sharing dreams about all the exciting things they would do with their first $10 million, they were torn between the desire to be rich and the recognition that cheating is morally wrong.

“I can sense your hesitation,” the lecturer said. “You must not let your emotions dictate your actions. You must confront your fears through a cost-benefit analysis. What are the pros of getting rich by cheating?” he asked.

“You get rich!” the students responded.

“That’s right. And what are the cons?”

“You get caught!”

“Ah,” said the lecturer, “There is a CHANCE you will get caught. BUT—here is the secret! Getting caught cheating is not the same as getting punished for cheating. Look at Bernie Ebbers, the ex-CEO of WorldCom. His lawyer whipped out the ‘Aw, shucks’ defense, saying that Ebbers simply did not know what was going on. Or Jeff Skilling, former CEO of Enron, who famously wrote an e-mail saying, ‘Shred the documents, they’re onto us.’ Skilling later testified that he was just being ‘sarcastic’! Now, if these defenses don’t work, you can always skip town to a country with no extradition laws!”

Slowly but surely, my guest lecturer—who in real life is a stand-up comedian named Jeff Kreisler and the author of a satirical book called Get Rich Cheating—was making a hard case for approaching financial decisions on a purely cost-benefit basis and paying no attention to moral considerations. Listening to Jeff’s lecture, the students realized that from a perfectly rational perspective, he was absolutely right. But at the same time they could not help but feel disturbed and repulsed by his endorsement of cheating as the best path to success.

At the end of the class, I asked the students to think about the extent to which their own behavior fit with the SMORC. “How many opportunities to cheat without getting caught do you have in a regular day?” I asked them. “How many of these opportunities do you take? How much more cheating would we see around us if everyone took Jeff’s cost-benefit approach?”

Setting Up the Testing Stage

Both Becker’s and Jeff’s approach to dishonesty are comprised of three basic elements: (1) the benefit that one stands to gain from the crime; (2) the probability of getting caught; and (3) the expected punishment if one is caught. By comparing the first component (the gain) with the last two components (the costs), the rational human being can determine whether committing a particular crime is worth it or not.

Now, it could be that the SMORC is an accurate description of the way people make decisions about honesty and cheating, but the uneasiness experienced by my students (and myself) with the implications of the SMORC suggests that it’s worth digging a bit further to figure out what is really going on. (The next few pages will describe in some detail the way we will measure cheating throughout this book, so please pay attention.)