Washington, 29 May 2012 (MIA) - Many of us like to think that we're honest, upstanding individuals and that it's a minority of society that actually lowers itself to lying and cheating.
But researchers are finding that, actually, we're not as virtuous as we think—and we all lie a little to make things swing in our favor.
Dan Ariely, a professor of economics at Duke University, wrote a fascinating article for the Wall Street Journal over the weekend about his experiments that investigate just how widespread cheating is.
Along with other experiments, his work suggests that only a very small number of people—the real rotten apples of society that we tend to fixate on—lie at a high level.
But virtually everybody—yes, even you—fibs a little here, a little there. We claim higher losses on insurance claims, overestimate our billable working hours, and make other small but sneaky claims to maximise our gains. It's engrained in human nature to say things that result in positive outcomes, even if they're not entirely true.
How can we stop people from lying? In fact, that's exactly what Ariely is working on now. He's found that reinforcing moral codes—like the ten commandments—while people undertake tasks reduces the amount of lying that goes on.
While that sounds unfeasible in the real world, consider this: one of his recent projects involves moving the signature box on official forms to the top. That means that, when completing paperwork, the first thing people do is read the declaration "I promise that the information I am providing is true." So far, his experiments show that even this minor tweak can make people lie less.