Is dishonesty human nature?

Dishonest behavior is extremely harmful to society, whether at home or abroad. In 2008, the shocking deception of Madoff and others broke out, which made the public question the perfect financial system and economic system in the West. People can't help asking why there is such dishonest behavior, how to explain it from the perspective of economics, and how to prevent and eliminate it. Gary becker, the Nobel Prize winner, made a rational analysis of dishonesty, which became a popular saying in the West. He believes that dishonest behavior is based on rational judgment. When the cost of dishonesty is less than the income, there will be lying or cheating, on the contrary, it will maintain the state of honesty. Following this principle, it is also very simple to prevent and put an end to dishonest behavior, that is, to strengthen monitoring and inspection, make dishonest behavior easier to be found, and at the same time increase punishment, so that its cost is far higher than its income. This explanation seems simple and effective, but the regulatory system and laws have failed to stop human bad habits, so some people question it. American behavioral economist dan ariely is one of them. In the book The Honest Truth of Dishonesty, he not only proved the defects and loopholes of the above model, but also put forward a new theory. As a behavioral economist, Ariely likes to prove everything with experiments. For example, according to rational analysis, the higher the income, the higher the probability of dishonesty, but this is not the case. In two comparative experiments, Ariely found that the income level has nothing to do with the degree of lying. When the income reaches a certain level, the degree of lying decreases. For another example, you can lie and cheat at will without supervision. At this time, the cost of dishonesty is zero. Will people cheat crazily for huge profits? No, except for a few cases, most of the experimenters are lying very gently and have no rational analysis conclusions. Through a series of experiments, Ariely realized that whether people are dishonest is not simply determined by external interests, but a game between internal interests and morality. That is to say, on the one hand, we hope to be an honest and respectable person, and to maintain such an image and self-identity, on the other hand, we hope to gain as much as possible from dishonesty. Honesty or not, the degree of dishonesty, whether it will damage your honest image and whether it will go beyond your moral bottom line depends on the position of two conflicting forces in your heart. Most people will balance the two in their minds, and Ariely calls the theory of maintaining this balance "economic coefficient" theory. Many factors are related to this "coefficient", which directly determines which side the balance will be biased towards the conflict force. Ariely has done a lot of discussion on the factors that affect the "coefficient" and well explained the reasons for some dishonest behaviors. These include staying away from money, moral vigilance, staying away from deception, signature order, conflict of interest, fatigue, honesty and so on. For example, when explaining why there are a lot of cheating behaviors in the financial field, Hariri found that this is because the operators are far away from financial instruments such as money, bonds and stocks and no longer contact with real money. At this time, the moral level will drop significantly. When the balance is broken and the interests are deviated, dishonest behavior will become commonplace. This is a negative factor, while positive factors, such as moral vigilance, have a very obvious effect in short-term behavior. A slogan or logo that happens to appear can effectively improve everyone's integrity. In documents such as tax returns, listing signatures at the beginning is more honest than listing signatures at the end. There are also some factors that surprise everyone, such as fatigue. When your energy is exhausted and it is difficult to concentrate, you will be more likely to lie and cheat. Most importantly, Ariely pointed out that dishonesty is human nature, and it is cross-cultural and geographical. Everyone was born with Pinocchio. But we always ignore this point, and are used to blaming personal greed and dishonesty for failure, the most typical of which is Enron's bankruptcy. People always think that it is caused by fraud by three senior leaders of the company. In fact, hundreds of Enron employees acquiesced and participated in this fraud. Every one of us lies and cheats together from time to time, which is actually more lethal than those giant scams. Starting from the factors that cause imbalance, it is much more useful to take measures to effectively avoid and reduce some dishonest behaviors than to blindly blame a few people and find scapegoats. Therefore, while complaining about this dishonest era, we might as well try to change our behavior first.