Why Steve Smith cheated — and why you and I do too…

I don’t cheat.

Self-deception is also cheating of a kind.

So tell me when and why I cheat.

Oh, you ‘cheat’ every time you jump a traffic light or park in a ‘No parking’ zone — or even when you help yourself to office stationery — because, essentially, you’re breaking the rules in the belief that you’ll get away with it. Which was what led to the undoing of cricketer Steve Smith and his two cohorts. But this isn’t personal, so let’s address the larger point.

Which is?

Rational economic theory, as advanced by Nobel laureate Gary Becker, explains why people commit ‘crimes’ – or even trifling misdemeanors: they do it based on a rational analysis of the situation in which they find themselves.

So, Smith’s cheating is ‘rational’?

Becker’s theory is open to criticism, but at its core, it holds that decisions about honesty are based on a cost-benefit analysis. A rational human being, it argues, will weigh the potential benefits from committing a crime against the probability of getting caught and the expected punishment.

But this calls Smith’s rationality into question.

Perhaps. Or perhaps Becker’s cost-benefit theory of dishonesty is incomplete, which is the point that behavioural economist Dan Ariely makes in his book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty .

Does he have a better explanation?

In his estimation, dishonesty is most likely not an outcome of a cost-benefit analysis. The probability of getting caught, he notes, does not have a substantial influence on the ‘amount of cheating’. He concludes, on the basis of extensive experiments, that “our sense of our own morality is connected to the amount of cheating we feel comfortable with. We cheat up to the level that allows us to retain our self-image as reasonably honest individuals.”

So, essentially, we’re all cheats?

What he says is that all of us go through this balancing act as a process of rationalisation for our lapse into ‘dishonesty’.

Tell me more.

The many experiments that Ariely and his team conducted established, among other things, that some types of activities lower our inhibitions about being ‘dishonest’. For instance, increasing the “psychological distance” between a dishonest deed and its consequences increases the prospect of cheating.

How so?

In an experiment where those who completed a set of puzzles and self-declared their results were rewarded money in proportion to the number of puzzles solved, it was found that participants ‘cheated’ (by inflating the number of puzzles solved) so as to earn more money. Worse, when the money was substituted with plastic chips (which could almost be traded in for money), the number of cheats doubled.

Whoa!

Yes, and this may have implications for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fixation with a cashless (or a less-cash economy). Ariely surmises, for instance, that “the more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips.” That’s because, he reckons, digital money may separate us from the reality of our actions to some degree.

Can’t we get people to cheat less?

Our tendency to cheat could be diminished if we are given reminders of ethical standards, writes Ariely. For instance, a notice in a toilet asking users not to pinch toilet paper cuts down on theft. When we become aware of the possibility of immoral behaviour, we reflect on our own morality and, as a consequence we behave more honestly.

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