This YouTube movie that i just watched was about cheating. I felt like it really related with our latest book Winners Never Cheat. He takes a while to get around to his point. So I suggest starting the movie at about 4:25. That is when he starts talking about everyones personal fudge factor. He goes on to say that he is an experimenter and in his testing almost everybody cheats. He says that everyone does a kind of cost benefit analysis and decides how much they can cheat and still feel good about themselves. The strange thing I thought was how no matter what the "rewards" for cheating were everybody cheated about the same. The other part that I thought was interesting was the set up for cheating. He asked people to write down 10 books that they read in high school, then tell the professor how many they got, and people did. But then when asked to write down 10 commandments they cheated less. I know that what I just said has tons of falicies but just watch the movie it is explained better in there.
Through Winners Never Cheat I have the desire to be the kind of person that has a Fudge Factor of 0. I'm not perfect and will not be any time soon but there is no sense in not trying for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw
ReplyDeleteI watched the video posted about Cheating and our Fudge Factor and really enjoyed it. I found all of the results of the experiments quite interesting and surprising, but one of them stuck out to me in particular. The experiment that surprised me the most was when the actor in the group stood up after 30 seconds of the test and said "I'm done, what do I do now?" He was then told he could leave the room and take his money.
This blatant cheating obviously did not go unnoticed by the other people in the room, but I thought it was very interesting how they would only follow his example and blatantly cheat if he was a part of their "in-group." Dr. Ariely said how it depended on what sweatshirt he was wearing as to whether or not, the others would follow his example.
That particular reaction made me think of another experiment that I'm sure many of you are familiar with about group conformity. I've posted a link to a YouTube video above describing this experiment and the interesting results it found.
We as people conform to those around us, in either positive or negative ways, so we need to be careful and really examine how we act.
Mark Israelsen
I found the part about the actor quite enlightening. It corresponds with a social psychological term called ingroup bias.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Ingroup%20Bias
The idea around ingroup bias is that when we identify ourselves with a particular group, we tend to identify with the individuals in that group and believe that there is a unified character in the group. No matter how arbitrary that group is, whether it is a softball team, a religious organization, or the board of a multinational corporation, we tend to see ourselves as being like them. With the executives at ENRON they saw what was happening and determined it to be the norm of the social group that they were in. because it became the norm they were disconnected from the moral implication of their shady business practices. And that is why your mother wanted you to hang out with friend that she deemed fine and upright youngsters. In business and in life we need to predetermine what we want our moral character to be like and strive to surround ourselves with individuals that meet that definition. If we do this, we will be more likely to act with upstanding and excellent ethical qualities.