This week’s book learning is part of an 8 part series from The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Last week, we were left with an intriguing question – if wearing counterfeits changes the way we view our own behavior, does it also cause us to be more suspicious of others?
To find out, Ariely and co. asked another group of participants to put on what they were told to be either real or fake Chloé sunglasses. They were asked to fill out a long survey with their sunglasses on. There were 3 sets of questions and they were asked to estimate the likelihood that…
Set A: people you know might engage in various ethically questionable behaviors such as standing in the express line with too many groceries.
Set B: When people say particular phrases, including “Sorry, I’m late. Traffic was terrible,” they are lying.
Set C: Given 2 scenarios with one honest and one dishonest option, the person in the scenario would take the opportunity to cheat.
The results? Participants in the counterfeit condition judged their acquaintances to be more likely to behave dishonestly than did participants in the authentic condition. They also interpreted the list of common excuses as more likely to be lies, and judged the actor in the two scenarios as being more likely to choose the shadier option.
Thus, counterfeit products not only tend to make us more dishonest; they also cause us to view others as less than honest as well.
Sketch by EB
To quote Ariely, “Thanks to self-signaling, a single act of dishonesty can change a person’s behavior from that point onward. What’s more, if it’s an act of dishonesty that comes with a built-in reminder (think about fake sunglasses with a big “Gucci” stamped on the side), the downstream influence could be long-lived and substantial. Ultimately, this means that we all pay a price for counterfeits in terms of moral currency; “faking it” changes our behavior, our self-image, and the way we view others around us.”
This brings us to another interesting question – are levels of dishonesty stable across culture? Another interesting experiment coming up next week..
A Learning a Day 