The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

We tested this idea in our next experiment. This time, we told half of the participants that the average student in this experiment solves about four matrices (which was true). We told the other half that the average student solves about eight matrices. Why did we do this? Because if the level of cheating is based on the desire to avoid standing out, then our participants would cheat in both conditions by a few matrices beyond what they believed was the average performance (meaning that they would claim to solve around six matrices when they thought the average was four and about ten matrices when they thought the average was eight).

So how did our participants behave when they expected others to solve more matrices? They were not influenced even to a small degree by this knowledge. They cheated by about two extra answers (they solved four and reported that they had solved six) regardless of whether they thought that others solved on average four or eight matrices.

This result suggests that cheating is not driven by concerns about standing out. Rather, it shows that our sense of our own morality is connected to the amount of cheating we feel comfortable with. Essentially, we cheat up to the level that allows us to retain our self-image as reasonably honest individuals.

Into the Wild

Armed with this initial evidence against the SMORC, Racheli and I decided to get out of the lab and venture into a more natural setting. We wanted to examine common situations that one might encounter on any given day. And we wanted to test “real people” and not just students (though I have discovered that students don’t like to be told that they are not real people). Another component missing from our experimental paradigm up to that point was the opportunity for people to behave in positive and benevolent ways. In our lab experiments, the best our participants could do was not cheat. But in many real-life situations, people can exhibit behaviors that are not only neutral but are also charitable and generous. With this added nuance in mind, we looked for situations that would let us test both the negative and the positive sides of human nature.

IMAGINE A LARGE farmer’s market spanning the length of a street. The market is located in the heart of Be’er Sheva, a town in southern Israel. It’s a hot day, and hundreds of merchants have set out their wares in front of the stores that line both sides of the street. You can smell fresh herbs and sour pickles, freshly baked bread and ripe strawberries, and your eyes wander over plates of olives and cheese. The sound of merchants shouting praises of their goods surrounds you: “Rak ha yom!” (only today), “Matok!” (sweet), “Bezol!” (cheap).

Eynav and Tali entered the market and headed in different directions, Eynav using a white cane to navigate the market. Each of them approached a few vegetable vendors and asked each of the sellers to pick out two kilos (about 4.5 pounds) of tomatoes for them while they went on another errand. Once they made their request, they left for about ten minutes, returned to pick up their tomatoes, paid, and left. From there they took the tomatoes to another vendor at the far end of the market who had agreed to judge the quality of the tomatoes from each seller. By comparing the quality of the tomatoes that were sold to Eynav and to Tali, we could figure out who got better produce and who got worse.

Did Eynav get a raw deal? Keep in mind that from a purely rational perspective, it would have made sense for the seller to choose his worst-looking tomatoes for her. After all, she could not possibly benefit from their aesthetic quality. A traditional economist from, say, the University of Chicago might even argue that in an effort to maximize the social welfare of everyone involved (the seller, Eynav, and the other consumers), the seller should have sold her the worst-looking tomatoes, keeping the pretty ones for people who could also enjoy that aspect of the tomatoes. As it turned out, the visual quality of the tomatoes chosen for Eynav was not worse and, in fact, was superior to those chosen for Tali. The sellers went out of their way, and at some cost to their business, to choose higher-quality produce for a blind customer.

WITH THOSE OPTIMISTIC results, we next turned to another profession that is often regarded with great suspicion: cab drivers. In the taxi world, there is a popular stunt called “long hauling,” which is the official term for taking passengers who don’t know their way around to their destination via a lengthy detour, sometimes adding substantially to the fare. For example, a study of cab drivers in Las Vegas found that some cabbies drive from McCarran International Airport to the Strip by going through a tunnel to Interstate 215, which can mount to a fare of $92 for what should be a two-mile journey.¹