The Good, the Bad and the Radically Dishonest

I came across an interesting article and decided to summarize it.

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Psychologists gathered 180 adults and ran an experiment. They flipped a coin, and if it came up heads, the participant was given a $5 prize. Participants who flipped heads were excluded from the experiment. The interesting part was the variety of reactions among the participants who flipped tails. They could be sorted into four types.

1. good: 20% honestly reported that the coin had come up tails.
2. bad: 10% of participants lied and claimed the coin had come up heads.
3. radically dishonest: These were the “radically dishonest.” They tried to claim the prize without even flipping the coin at all.
4. cheating non-liars: Cheaters who don’t lie. 8% of participants flipped the coin repeatedly until it came up heads.

The fourth type may have been rationalizing their behavior with thoughts like, “Everyone else cheats, so why shouldn’t I?” or “Sacrifice the small for the greater good.” These cheating non-liars figured that they had merely failed to follow the instructions, but had not actually lied. They held a high bar for what counts as lying. This is a personality trait of theirs.

The psychologists ran a follow-up experiment as well. They recruited 170 new participants, told them the prize would be paid out based on the value rolled on a die, and had them roll. The catch was a rule that anyone who rolled a 6 would receive no money. The groups broke down into roughly the same proportions as the previous experiment: good, bad, the hopelessly dishonest (radically dishonest), and 8% cheating non-liars. Among these liars, another interesting fact was observed. There were people who, rather than taking the maximum prize of $5, instead took $4 or $3. This type was classified as “sub-maximizing.” They were people who lied only to a moderate degree, just enough to rationalize their behavior.

Of course, there’s no reason to assume that the phenomena observed in this experiment carry over directly into the real world. In any case, the 8% (the cheating non-liars) are fascinating. One has to wonder whether they have some kind of obsession about lying, or whether something happened to them in childhood.

Source: The Good, the Bad and the ‘Radically Dishonest’ - The New York Times