Rating: 2.3/5
Quite disappointed because Ariely was a recommended author but this book fell flat in scope, insight, and research. Most of the social experiments in the book are performed in academic settings with students. Ariely does not venture further with his research to extrapolate his findings to real life scenarios and I found this quite frustrating. The use of matrices throughout the book also gave the book a monotone quality. The book was lacking in diversity of examples to support his thesis.
Insights:
- In certain circumstances, dishonesty is needed to ensure certain values are kept in balance i.e. honesty vs. peace vs. buy-in; to a certain degree, dishonesty is part of the social glue of relationships
- We need rules/structure to ease cognitive thinking – Making decisions is mentally depleting whereas rules/structure ease cognitive thinking. Willpower is finite so we need controls in place such as habits, moral reminders, starting over to keep the virtue of honest
- As our society, becomes more cashless (i.e. electronic transfers, bitcoin), will it make it easier to justify dishonesty?
- A dishonest person can be happy if the stories they tell are consistent with their self-image of an honest person. Lies and the truth are eventually indistinguishable. Liars might have the skill of being incredibly creative, but the fabrication and maintenance of stories is mentally taxing.
- Sometimes we lie to ourselves to choose the familiar and comfortable.
Favourite Quotes
Put simply, the link between creativity and dishonest seems related to the ability to tell ourselves stories about how we are doing the right thing, even when we are not. The more creative we are, the more we are able to come up with good stories that help us justify our selfish interests. Locks won’t protect you from the thieves, who can get in your if the really want to. They will only protect you from the mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door if it had no lock.