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RSA ANIMATE: The Truth About Dishonesty

Royal Society of Arts

790K subscribers • 6 videos on Rounds

YouTube
  • Recommended by 1 person, in Hacker News.
  • Presented by Dan Ariely, as the video describes them
  • Debated among experts. Its central claim is contested, so look for the other side.

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

1.4M views14 years ago1 recommendation

Brain and nervesNeuroscience

An animated adaptation of a lecture by Dan Ariely exploring the psychology of cheating, rationalization, and human dishonesty.

Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large? Dan Ariely, one of the world's leading voices on human motivation and behaviour is the latest big thinker to get the RSA Animate treatment. Taken from a lecture given at the RSA in July 2012 . Watch the longer talk here youtube.com/watch?v=ZGGxguJsirI Follow the RSA on Twitter: twitter.com/RSAEvents Like the RSA on Facebook: facebook.com/rsaeventsofficial/ Listen to RSA podcasts: soundcloud.com/the_rsa See RSA Events behind the scenes: instagram.com/rsa_events/ ------ Produced and edited by Abi Stephenson, RSA. Animation by Cognitive Media.

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended for its insightful explanation of how people rationalize minor dishonest acts while still viewing themselves as good.

Maarten88in Hacker News • Recommends

On “Volkswagen and the Blame the Engineer Game”

Very few people really think of themselves as evil. But in my worldview most people (including engineers) cheat a little bit and then rationalize it so they don't have to feel bad about themselves. Big corporations and complex economical systems lend themselves very well for rationalizing your part in something evil away, especially for upper management. Watch this video. It changed my view on the world: link to this video p.s. It has been shown that the psychological profile of top-criminals and CEO's are remarkably alike.

pdkl95in Hacker News • Mentions

On “The dangers of letting algorithms make decisions in law enforcement”

"Decision-making algorithms are politics played out at a distance, generating a troubling amount of emotional remove." This is absolutely key. Adding distance1 between the point where a decision is made and where the consequences of that decision are realized make it harder for any feedback from those consequences to affect the person making the decision. This makes the decisions worse (from lack of information) and the implementation worse (error must be much larger before the feedback from that error reaches the decision maker). You see this effect in many areas. An obvious example is the law enforcement mentioned the article (or military), where "just following orders" to the modern var…

vanderZwanin Hacker News • Mentions

On “People Are More Likely to Cheat at the End”

That is almost exactly what Daniel Ariely's research on dishonesty is about, this notion of cheating so slightly you don't feel guilty about it: link to this video

pdkl95in Hacker News • Mentions

On “Congressman introduces bill to end warrantless Stingray surveillance”

…people with a modern "scarlet letter" for their mistakes doesn't create an incentive for that person to change their behavior1. Once someone has "paid their debt to society", they deserve a 2nd chance that is free of past accusations. There may be a way to make some aspects of a registry work without these problems, but I'm haven't seen it. 1 link to this video ("The Truth About Dishonesty")…