The good news is that I only recommend Dan Ariely’s new book
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves
to those of us who lie or cheat. The bad
news is that this immoral group includes all of us, yes even you… and your
family… and your co-workers… and your elderly neighbors… and your academic
instructors, politicians (how shocking!), dentists, doctors… you get the idea.
While Dishonesty will certainly not be considered the “feel
good” book of the summer, it represents a very important work in the field of
behavioral economics which is the culmination of dozens of experiments and
studies that have been performed by the author and his fellow researchers.
For the very few of you who may not be familiar with Ariely,
he is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavior Economics at Duke
University and the author of two past best sellers; Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality
.
In Dishonesty, Ariely answers some very difficult questions
such as; why/how do people act dishonestly and how can we prevent these acts.
He starts by exploring the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) which
attempts to explain the how we decide if and when we will act dishonestly. The
premise of the book is that many factors and situations need to be taken into
account to understand when and why people are dishonest and the bulk of the
chapters are dedicated to exploring specific situations.
