Here’s What Dishonesty is Really About | Big Think
Here’s What Dishonesty is Really About
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Behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely has spent over 10 years researching human dishonesty. What are the different kinds of dishonesty? Why do we tell lies? How can one act of dishonesty escalate further? In this video, Ariely discusses white lies (lies you tell for other peoples' benefit), "the subway was late" lies that benefit ourselves, and, further, the lies we juggle when our personal and business lives intersect. If you're interested in how dishonesty forms in the brain or how one dishonest act can lead to others, check out this video.
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DAN ARIELY:
Dan Ariely is the James B Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and co-founder of BEworks, which helps business leaders apply scientific thinking to their marketing and operational challenges. His books include Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which became New York Times best-sellers. as well as The Honest Truth about Dishonesty and his latest, Irrationally Yours.
Ariely publishes widely in the leading scholarly journals in economics, psychology, and business. His work has been featured in a variety of media including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Business 2.0, Scientific American, Science and CNN.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Dan Ariely: One of the main streams of my research for the last more than 10 years has been focusing on dishonesty. And dishonesty is really interesting because it’s not just about dishonesty. It’s actually a phenomenon that captures almost all of the human principles of behavior. It’s about selfishness versus generosity. It’s about us versus other people. It’s about rationalization. It really captures a lot of things. And because of this, there are lots of forces that drive dishonesty. But here is one way to start thinking about it. When we grew up, we grew up in a social environment and our parents tried to teach us what is acceptable and not acceptable. And in that environment white lies are certainly acceptable, encouraged. And our parents teach us, you know, as somebody who has a visible disability, you know, I see kids from time to time point at me and say, “Mommy, why is this man has scars.” And the parents often say, “It’s not nice to point. Don’t say that.” Basically, right. So there is a lot of things that we teach kids about how to be polite. And being polite often means not saying the exact truth. We teach them that. So this is white lies, right.
And white lies are not about our benefit. It’s about the benefit of others, right. Then, of course, there are the lies that have our benefit as well. Here in New York, I think the subways is probably blamed for lots of things that they are not responsible for. Probably everybody who was ever late in New York blames the subway for some reason, right. They don’t say, "Oh, you know, I know we had a meeting. I was just - I couldn’t care really about getting here on time. I don’t care so much about you waiting for me so I left like..." You don’t say that, right. You say, "I left on time it’s just the subway, you wouldn’t believe what happened." Those are not lies for other people. It’s true that they don’t offend other people, but they help you as well. And then there are lies that are more and more selfish over time. But the interesting thing is that we learn to lie in the social realm and then when we move to the business world, all of a sudden we’re not supposed to lie. But can we make this transition? It turns out its very hard to make this transition and it’s very hard to make this transition especially when your social circle and business circles are overlapping. I think a lot about students at the university. Their social cycle which is - circle - which is their friends on campus and the people they work with, the people that they collaborate and do papers with and so on are the same people. The overlap is almost perfect.
Can we expect them to say oh, this is a social realm. It’s okay to be polite. This is a professional realm; let me not. So as those circles overlap it becomes harder and hard to keep honestly and not to be dishonest. The other thing though is that we’ve done lots of things in the lab about dishonesty. We got people to steal money from us and we see when they steal more and when they steal less. But in the last few years,....
To read the transcript, please go to bigthink.com/videos/human-dis...
Пікірлер: 63
Louis C.K.: "I like to think I'm a nice person, but I don't know - a lot of it is context"
@clevernameuh
9 жыл бұрын
Pablo G. Martinez Amazing how many pearls of wisdom and kernels of truth come from comedians, isn't it?
I didn't know that spanish John Rambo is a psychologist...
The best thing about this video is that it is 4:20 in length
Why is he saying that people aren't supposed to lie in the business world? If anything, it is more encouraged there, cause the motive is not the relationships within the workplace, but the business' success.
@Hotshot2k4
9 жыл бұрын
dennisrossonero Probably because TV isn't a good representation for what business is supposed to be like.
@HoangNhatDukyDuc
9 жыл бұрын
dennisrossonero you need to get a job.
@brod2man
9 жыл бұрын
dennisrossonero I guess because I don't have technical knowledge of how businesses work, I can't really say whether lying is better or worse for success. But on a smaller scale, colleague/employer relationships - problems can be caused by white lies. Telling someone you made an error and therefore know how to solve it, is probably a lot more efficient than pretending to be ignorant of the error and seeing it cause more problems and/or need a much more elaborate and costly method to see it fixed. In the home it might be a quick fix solution to why the vase is broken, by saying the cat did it or the wind knocked it over. Everyone is immediately relieved of responsibility and life goes on as normal. In the work place, different consequences exist. MAYBE this is something along the lines as to what the speaker was referring to. But I also had to stop at the point and ask, "Why is it so bad in the business world?"
I LOVE all of Arieli's research fields. They all surround irrationality on some way, which I find fascinating.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." yet you wear no mask, i like that, people see a harsh face, but you tell the truth so
@MrBradJJ
9 жыл бұрын
***** when they are undergoing, for example, mdma/psilocybin psychotherapy... they are known for getting people to open up and be true about how they feel to others. definitely good reasons to increase funding and relax laws for psychoactive drug research imo.
@provehitocobalt
9 жыл бұрын
So edgy
his ideas and studies findings always leave me with some fascinating after thoughts. Can't wait to get my hands on his new book!
Great guy! Love all of his books, highly recommend them.
There is no such thing as a white lie, and I disagree with his assertion that parents teach their children that these are acceptable. I believe that the vast majority of people are honest. The few who are not try to rationalize it by convincing themselves that everyone is dishonest, and that their behavior is therefore normal. This seems to be what the person in this video is doing.
@EugeneKhutoryansky
9 жыл бұрын
***** There is no shortage of poorly performed studies even in the hard sciences, and when it comes to soft sciences such as psychology, this problem becomes even more notorious. And no person is ever benefited from being deceived or manipulated.
@chefkochjay
9 жыл бұрын
Eugene Khutoryansky Celderis Nevertheless, there seems to be somewhat of a range of "telling the truth" a statement can lie in due to several factors like your own perception of an overarching truth (if there is one) and the listener's. So white lies... Don't have to be uttered as such to be perceived as such if you know what I mean. So there has to be some kind of truthy-area before you get into a full blown lie, doesn't there? It can't be just black/white, that is (imho) too easy an outlook on reality.
@EugeneKhutoryansky
9 жыл бұрын
*****, I have seen enough psychological studies where when I looked at the data, it had absolutely nothing to do with the conclusion that the author was trying to draw. This doesn't necessarily mean that all psychological studies are always flawed, but it does mean that skepticism is warranted until we examine the data for ourselves.
@MiiiK3EY
9 жыл бұрын
AsifIcarebear3 Women wear makeup... XD
@sandreid87
9 жыл бұрын
Eugene Khutoryansky You can't be completely honest. If you are, you will hurt people. And hurting people is bad, both emotionally or physically. I agree with him on white lies. We do teach our kids to generally be honest, but there are many situations, where you want to slightly hide the truth or completely avoid it, just to spare someone's feelings. Why? Because you don't want to see that being hurt. We have to live together. We can't be 100% honest with eachother because people are different.
The idea at the end must be the basis for why ancient Greeks appreciated and empathized with tragic stories and plays so much.
It might be a slippery slope, but that's still no excuse.
But what about the one that wasn't a slippery slope?
@adolfodef
9 жыл бұрын
***** Statistically speaking (from a bunch of people who did "big crimes"), he/she was probably the one with the neurological capacitity to avoid the feeling of empathy [aka "psychopath"].
so the main problem is 'the self'.. the 'me'. this is the creator of all the misery in our lives
"Why does he have those scars?" If I parent, I hope I can have the energy and care to instead answer "Lets talk about this in the car later." and then "Maybe he had an accident and survived it. Maybe he was born with it? What do you think? Do you think this makes him less, more, neither?" (using words that fit the child's age)
I am reminded of the movie Liar, liar with Jim Carrey.
in all due fairness, human behaviour should be based on general principles, i.e., what is right and what is wrong, not on what you think is honest or dishonest.
Clickbate title, decent video. I enjoyed your accent. You have my upvote
So it fits the mutual benifits, so lying is good, lol
superawesome
Lies, all lies!
Looks like Rocky Balboa
Never begin sentences with "and," "but," or "with" as those are incomplete thoughts and incomplete sentences. Throughout the video, there are many other grammatical mistakes dealing with singular and plural issues. For credibility, you should update the written portions and the video as poor grammar conveys a lack of detail to communicating and that impedes all credibility with the audience. B
@joshrasberry5661
9 жыл бұрын
Brennan Callan Oh, shut up. He's speaking like a human being. Language is a relative thing, it's not like math, you can never truly make a "mistake"... especially when the vast majority of English speakers speak in this way.
@BrennanCallan
9 жыл бұрын
Joshua Rasberry Joshua, you are proving my point that if someone does not speak well, then they sound like an idiot and must be dismissed. You have chosen to be rude with the opening of your pointless statement. If you are not the original guy in the video, then this is no concern of yours is it? Perhaps you would do well to seek higher education yourself if you believe that it is "speaking like a human being." WRONG, it is speaking as if he is a poorly educated human being. If you want to praise someone who sounds uneducated, that is certainly your right, but neither he nor you are impressive to the majority of humans. When someone cannot speak their own language properly, then all they espouse to say is just as flawed. No one worth positively impressing is positively impressed with bad grammar. Clearly, the public education system has failed you.