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We are all prone to cheating 鈥� but our everyday dishonesty is Little League compared with the bankers and financiers who can do it on an epic scale. And because their dishonesty reverberates globally, they especially need to heed lessons from the psychology of cheating, behavioural economist Dan Ariely tells Graham Lawton

You鈥檝e written bestsellers about irrationality. Why does it interest you?
I care about the mistakes people make for two reasons. The first is when people violate standard economic theory 鈥� because a lot of our legislation and the way companies think assume that people are perfectly rational. The second is that if people don鈥檛 understand how they behave, they get into trouble.

Your new book is about dishonesty. How does that fit in?
The rational view of dishonesty is that people cheat because it is worth their while. This simple model of rational crime (SMORC) says that people look at how much they stand to gain, at the probability of being caught, and at the size of the punishment. Which is bigger? But if you count the chances you had to steal today without being caught, there鈥檚 lots of opportunity. I doubt it crossed your mind, but if you did it, you would feel bad about yourself. We鈥檙e much more honest than if we were perfectly rational. So SMORC is basically how we view psychopaths. And if you think about the economic model, it鈥檚 also a model for psychopaths.

What is the alternative view?
For me, it鈥檚 that cheating is typical. In our experiments, we find that people can cheat a little and still feel good about themselves. That is a perfect example of irrationality.

What is the evidence that cheating is routine?
We give people a sheet of paper with 20 mathematics questions, for example, and we say solve as many as you can, we鈥檒l pay you $1 per correct question. After 5 minutes, we say, stop and count how many you got correct, then take the piece of paper and shred it, and come back and tell us how many you got. What people don鈥檛 know is that the shredder has been fixed so it only shreds the sides, so we know how many questions they really solved. People usually solve four and report six.

They鈥檙e cheating, but only by a bit. Why don鈥檛 they tell you they solved 10 or all 20?
The mechanism is rationalisation. We want to benefit from cheating, but we also want to feel that we鈥檙e honest and caring. If everything was clear-cut, we would do one or the other.

What about the real world and cheating?
In banking, the rules are very unclear and because of that, there are lots of things you can do and still feel good. We did a study asking people to imagine being the head of a bank, and they could do things like increase fees and charges 鈥� 鈥渞evenue enhancement鈥� in banking lingo. The moment you tell people that they鈥檙e working for a company, that the motive is to maximise shareholder value, they鈥檙e much more willing to cheat.

In financial markets generally, I think economic theory is providing people with an ideology to rationalise. Shareholder value will allow you to justify lots of things. Your bonus is tied to the stock, but you鈥檙e not saying, I鈥檓 doing things to get the bonus, you say, I鈥檓 maximising shareholder value. Why these high salaries? It鈥檚 economics. If the market wouldn鈥檛 bear it, people wouldn鈥檛 pay.

What if you take money out of the equation?
One of the most frightening experiments we did was when we got people to cheat for tokens that they could then exchange for money. When they reported how many of those mathematics questions they got correct, they doubled the cheat. The act of lying for something that is one step removed from money relieved them of their moral obligations. Think about what happens with mortgage-backed securities and stock options.

Do you distinguish between widespread, low-level cheating and people like financier Bernie Madoff, who is in jail for stealing billions?
I don鈥檛 think there is a big distinction. They have an opportunity, regularly, on a bigger scale, and they have time to escalate things. We find that once you start cheating, it鈥檚 easier to justify more and more. There is a slippery slope. I鈥檓 not saying there are no psychopaths out there, but the vast majority of dishonesty is, I think, caused by rationalisation rather than crime.

鈥淭he majority of dishonesty is caused by rationalisation rather than crime鈥�

If the SMORC doesn鈥檛 hold up, what does that mean for our legal system?
I recently interviewed a federal judge and he said he has never met a person who thought about the consequences of their crime. Let me ask you, what鈥檚 the punishment for embezzling 拢10,000 from your employer?

The sack and prison, presumably?
How long in prison? You have no idea! People don鈥檛 know the real consequences. There was a study recently that looked at the death penalty. If you think about deterrence, the death penalty is right up there. But it鈥檚 unclear that the penalty is actually decreasing crime. So deterrence is not getting us as much as we think, partly because when people commit the crime, they don鈥檛 really think about it.

How much money have you lost to people cheating in your experiments?
About $50,000. None of it was taxpayers鈥� money. I get most of my research funding from companies.

Is cheating and dishonesty evolutionary? That鈥檚 not a word that crops up in your new book?
There鈥檚 probably an equilibrium in which some dishonesty is allowed to be maintained and some is not. Now the tricky thing with all these evolutionary explanations is that we have not evolved to live in an environment where we could spend a couple of billion dollars on a particular hedge fund, so the size of the risks that we are able to take under this logic and the size of devastation we can create is much, much higher.

We tend to think some countries are more prone to cheating. Is this true?
I don鈥檛 think that people are very different, but culture comes and changes the latitude with which we accept specific behaviours. Having an affair, paying your taxes, all these things change in some cultures.

Will building the big picture about why and how people cheat make people more honest?
I think it鈥檚 incredibly important for us to realise how capable people are of cheating a little bit and still feeling good about themselves. If you look at the time between the start of the global financial crisis and now, and ask what we鈥檝e learned, the answer is not much. This book is about all the things we haven鈥檛 learned. From this perspective, it鈥檚 going to be a very sad journey. The main audience is bankers and regulators, and my fear is that the people who need to listen the most are the ones that are least likely to listen.

Is there anything else we can do?
If somebody comes to you and finds out, say, that you have illegal music on your computer, would you be embarrassed?

No.
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The obvious answer is because everybody has illegal music on their computer.
So we鈥檝e taken some behaviours and we鈥檝e made them not about morality. With illegal downloads, you鈥檙e probably like a psychopath. You have no internal mechanisms, it鈥檚 just cost and benefit. The moment society gets to a situation in which something is just about cost and benefit, it鈥檚 devastating. We need to start dealing with our morals way before we get there, so I would spend much more time on things that try to establish the appropriate social norms rather than think that catching people later is going to have any effect.