Ch. 11 of Predictably Irrational- Summary and Response

In Chapter 11 of Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, he discusses how there are different types of dishonesty, and how we perceive dishonesty differently by who does the dishonest acts and what kind of acts they are. Ariel explain that there is the standard image of dishonesty that appears in the form of crooks circling around a gas station, debating whether or not they should rob it. The second image is that of people who would typically consider themselves to be honest people- these are the people who might take a pen from a conference site or take some extra soda from a drink dispenser. This second group it the one Ariely decided to test to see how prevalent this type of honesty was. his subjects consisted of students from Harvard University. Ariel asked the students to take a test of 50 multiple choice questions in 15 minutes. The students then had to transfer their answers to a scoring sheet (bubble sheet). However, Ariely broke this process up into four groups to test dishonesty. One group twas the group Ariely compared the other three to- these were just students who took the test normally and just transferred their answers to the bubble sheet. The second group had premarked correct answers on their bubble sheet, the third, had premarked answers and and could shred their original worksheet, and the fourth could shred both the original worksheet and the premarked bubble sheet. Ariel’s results showed that each group with the premarked bubble sheet cheated- but only slightly. Even though they were given the chance to cheat more, they chose to play it safe. Ariel claims that there is a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to honesty or dishonesty. Ariel claims that honesty is important to people, but that people’s internal honesty monitor in the Superego is only active when people think about committing big transgressions. Ariely suggests that if people use non-religious benchmarks that make people think about honesty before the take tests, for example, it may reduce the amount of dishonesty we see.

Dan Ariely states that in order to curb dishonesty in our lives we should have reminders of honesty before we do anything important. SO little reminders before people make big decisions can curb dishonesty. Students deal with a great deal of temptation on a daily basis. We deal with the temptation of what Ariely already mentioned, that of cheating, especially in classes where the teachers aren’t as stern or attentive. We also face temptation to skip class for extra time to sleep, hang out with friends, or to catch up on work. There is also temptation from friends to go out and not do work. Students commit small transgressions, like maybe doing an assignment and copying some answers from a friend and rewording them or perhaps lying to their teachers about why their assignments aren’t completed (ex: my computer isn’t working).