Philosophy
If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal, on a regular basis! Notice the irony? In answering a question about your own honesty, you behave dishonestly! Well, it's not quite that straightforward. It's not so much that you'd be lying to me; it's more that you'd be lying to yourself, and then to the rest of us as a consequence.
Our minds have an incredible capacity for compartmentalization: we separate into distinct groups instances of what ought to be logically identical situations, such as when you create the double standard that it's okay for you to take home some office supplies from work, but that it's not okay to steal an equivalent amount of money from the petty cash box. The other thing we're really good at in this context is rationalization: when confronted with our dishonesty, we are masters at justifying our behavior and turning it around to sound heroic: "it's okay for me to illegally download music because that means I'm standing up for freedom and fighting the corruption of multi-billion dollar music label companies, so if you think about it, I'm kind of a moral hero."
Well, in the following RSA animated presentation, Dan Ariely shares some of the fascinating findings of how everyday people like you and me cheat all the time, and what might be some useful mechanisms we can use to decrease our own corruption.
If you liked that, you might also like to check our our selection of TED Talk presentations.
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Philosophy
Dan Ariely - The Truth about Dishonesty
Our minds have an incredible capacity for compartmentalization: we separate into distinct groups instances of what ought to be logically identical situations, such as when you create the double standard that it's okay for you to take home some office supplies from work, but that it's not okay to steal an equivalent amount of money from the petty cash box. The other thing we're really good at in this context is rationalization: when confronted with our dishonesty, we are masters at justifying our behavior and turning it around to sound heroic: "it's okay for me to illegally download music because that means I'm standing up for freedom and fighting the corruption of multi-billion dollar music label companies, so if you think about it, I'm kind of a moral hero."
Well, in the following RSA animated presentation, Dan Ariely shares some of the fascinating findings of how everyday people like you and me cheat all the time, and what might be some useful mechanisms we can use to decrease our own corruption.
If you liked that, you might also like to check our our selection of TED Talk presentations.
- Agap? And Our Mett? Obligation
Guest post from C.Ewing: Linkage and here. Recently, I had a discussion with TR about the linear assumption people seem to have. That is, if one appears to be acting in a kind way (performing a kind action) then we tend to assume that this relates back...
- Confidence
What is it to be confident? It's easy to fall into a bad way of thinking about our psychological concepts. We tend to think that we can know, through introspection, whether a psychological concept can be properly applied to us. We think that we just...
- The Story Of Cap & Trade
Here in the United States, a large percentage of our population seems to be increasingly obsessed with the 'invisible hand' of capitalism and the 'wisdom' of the free market. Interestingly, many of these folks are also the very same people...
- Social Security Reform Bill Encourages Americans To Live Faster, Die Younger
One thing that has become so crystal clear even the blind can see it, is that while Republicans appeal to American values, love of country, the Founding Fathers and so on, they don't really give a shit about average people like you and me. They...
- Those Pesky "moral Dilemmas"
"Are we more -- or less -- moral than we think?" February 22nd, 2011 PhysOrg.com If asked whether we'd steal, most of us would say no. Would we try to save a drowning person? That depends—perhaps on our fear of big waves. Much research has explored...