Loving to cheat

To be filed in the normal-people-are-more-like-sociopaths-than-they-would-like-to-think folder (but sociopaths are evil because they lie and cheat!), the NY Times reports recent research suggesting that despite popular wisdom that people feel guilty for doing bad things like cheating, people feel pretty good after they cheat.  "Cheating's Surprising Thrill"

In the study’s initial experiments, participants were asked to predict how they would feel if they cheated. Badly, they generally reported.

Another set of participants was given a baseline assessment of their moods. Then they took a word-unscrambling test. After finishing, they were handed an answer key, told to check their answers and asked to report the number of correct ones. For every right answer, they would earn $1.

Participants did not know that researchers could tell if they corrected wrong answers; 41 percent did so.

The follow-up assessment of their moods indeed showed that the cheaters, on average, felt an emotional boost that the honest participants didn’t.

“The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing, because there is emotional reinforcement of the behavior, meaning they could be more likely to do it again,” said Nicole E. Ruedy, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Washington’s Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking.

Then she and her colleagues removed the financial incentive. A new group would take a test on a computer. The results, they were told, would correlate with intelligence and a likelihood of future success.

But 77 participants were told that if they saw a pop-up message offering them the correct answer, they should ignore it and continue working.

About 68 percent of this group cheated at least once, clicking the button for the correct answer. In the follow-up assessment, this group also reported a rise in upbeat feelings.

Why did people feel so good about cheating? Was it relief at not being caught? That would imply that while cheating, they felt stress or distress. Or had they deceived themselves, rationalizing or minimizing the cheating to feel better?

Stripping away these possibilities, the researchers found that those who cheated experienced thrill, self-satisfaction, a sense of superiority.

The effect persisted even when subjects cheated indirectly. Next, they would solve math problems with someone who was just pretending to be a participant. The fake participant reported the results, elevating the scores, thus cheating for both. But no actual participant objected. And again, they felt just fine about it.

“We were a little appalled,” Dr. Ruedy said.

I thought these reactions were funny. "We were a little appalled"? "The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing"? Because this study is just a snapshot of reality. This is what people do everyday. If most people will cheat in situations like this, it just means that most people will cheat in situations like this. And that's a problem for governments seeking to maximize their tax revenue and insurance companies who do not get 100% accurate reports from their customers, but why do other people care? This is apparently just how people are. This experiment was not like the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, which put people in unusual circumstances to provoke unusual behavior. These were everyday people doing everyday things, and it turns out that people cheat about as often as they jaywalk or commit traffic violations. Where's the story?

The shock for me is not that the behavior is so common or that the participants were not wracked with guilt after committing such petty infractions, it's that anybody was "appalled" or found it "disturbing". Of course people are going to be happy about cheating because they are happy when they're winning. Our brain wants us to get ahead, our culture encourages us to get ahead. We are naturally competitive. You don't need to be an interspecies predator to get a rush from getting one up on someone, whether it is called "honestly earned" like a cunning stock trade based on another's ignorance or poor judgment, or is called "cheating" because it happens to exploit obvious loopholes in the system. It reminds me of the time my Swedish friend came to visit and I said the pleasure of capitalism over socialism is not that you get a particular thing, but that you get more than someone else. She didn't agree at all until we went to a theme park where we bought VIP passes that allowed us to go to the front of the line and she realized that a big part of her pleasure was not in going on more attractions, but in saving time as compared to other people.

Here's what I want in the follow-up study. Do the participants lie to themselves about the cheating? If they're not lying to themselves about the cheating, are we lying to ourselves about how frequently and guiltlessly people lie, cheat, despite having empathy, despite having consciences and the ability to feel guilt? Here's a crazy thought -- maybe we shouldn't want to discourage people from cheating more than we already do. Maybe there are upsides to "cheating" or the willingness to cheat. That would certainly explain why it is so prevalent.

Modeling the success of cheaters

It was hilarious to me reading some of the responses to the just world fallacy post.  A lot of people really struggled with the gross inaccuracy of the phrase "cheaters never win." I stumbled upon this Forbes article which concisely explains with mathematical modeling how it is that cheaters win:


I want to make sure I say that there is a more elemental reason why meritocracy produces a corrupt ruling class and it is this:

Cheaters may almost never win but, given equal opportunity and a large enough competition, the winners are almost always cheaters.

Why?

Well, no one cheats because they think if that even if they get away with it they will be worse off. No, they cheat because if they get away with it they will be better off. Cheaters are taking a gamble.

Even if the system is pretty good and the odds are stacked against the cheaters, if there are enough players then some of the cheaters will get away with it, nonetheless.

When they do they will gain an advantage. Now, imagine that life is a series of such competitions played over and over again. Each time some people will cheat and some will get away with it. Each time some will gain an advantage.

If the competition is immense, say it encompasses a country of 300 Million or a global population of 7 Billion, then by the Law of Large numbers some cheaters will be lucky enough to get away with it every single time. This means every single round they gain an advantage and slip ahead of the pack.

After enough rounds the front of the pack is completely dominated by cheaters.

That doesn't necessarily mean that cheating will always mean cheating will always pay off.  As the Forbes article concludes, "Lottery players almost always lose, but society’s biggest winners will almost always have made their money in the lottery."

Creativity = immorality

File this under "how to become more like a sociopath," this Scientific American article discusses how being creative (and even thinking more creatively) makes you more likely to cross moral boundaries:

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at Harvard and Duke Universities demonstrate that creativity can lead people to behave unethically. In five studies, the authors show that creative individuals are more likely to be dishonest, and that individuals induced to think creatively were more likely to be dishonest. Importantly, they showed that this effect is not explained by any tendency for creative people to be more intelligent, but rather that creativity leads people to more easily come up with justifications for their unscrupulous actions.
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The authors hypothesized that it is creativity which causes unethical behavior by allowing people the means to justify their misdeeds, but it is hard to say for certain whether this is correct given the correlational nature of the study. It could just as easily be true, after all, that unethical behavior leads people to be more creative, or that there is something else which causes both creativity and dishonesty, such as intelligence. To explore this, the authors set up an experiment in which participants were induced into a creative mindset and then given the opportunity to cheat.  [It did.]
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In addition, the researchers had guessed that creativity would lead to unethical behavior because it enabled people to more easily come up with justifications for their actions. Research has previously shown that whenever people do something which might be perceived as bad, they tend to reduce the ‘badness’ of this behavior by finding some justification for their corrupt behavior. As an example, if you find yourself being less than honest on your taxes, you may justify this by telling yourself that this is something everyone does, or that it doesn’t really hurt anyone.

The craziest part about this is the final experiment, that basically shows that one of the primary reasons why people don't cheat is that they can't come up with their own justifications for their behavior and that once you provide a readymade justification for them, they are much more likely to cheat:

So, if creativity leads to dishonesty primarily by assisting in coming up with justifications for dishonest behavior a creative mindset should not influence people’s likelihood of cheating if they already have some justification in mind. To test this idea, the researchers provided ‘justifications’ for some participants by allowing them to roll the die multiple times, but telling them that only the first roll counted. It turns out that one way of increasing the ease with which people can come up with justifications is by allowing them to observe something which almost happened, but didn’t. In this case, rolling a six on the second roll after rolling a lower number on the first, critical roll should give people a leg up on justifying their dishonest behavior.

It was found that when asked to roll the die once, people not primed with creativity were relatively honest. Individuals primed with creativity, on the other hand, behaved much more dishonestly, reporting much higher die rolls on average. Further, this effect disappeared when people rolled the die multiple times. That is, when people were provided with help to think up justifications, creativity had no effect on cheating. This pattern of results seems to confirm that creativity helps people to think up justifications for dishonest behavior.

These studies demonstrate that there is indeed a dark side to creativity. Perhaps, given this information, it should come as no surprise that the best and brightest in many fields are frequently caught in all manner of immoral transgressions.

Now empaths who want to acquire the skills of a sociopath have yet another avenue to pursue in cultivating an ability to be morally blind -- creativity.  According to the article, all sorts of activities can get you in that cheating frame of mind, even something as simple as arranging the words sky, is, why, blue, and the, into the sentence, “the sky is blue”.  This may also be why showbusiness is so cutthroat.

Shame and Justification (part 3)

Under the title "The Moral Diet," NY Times op-ed columnist David Brooks reviews Dan Ariely’s new book “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty” (Ariely is also the author of the recent Conscience+, the app).  Ariely told the story of how the gift shop at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was the victim of rampant embezzlement, mainly by elderly volunteers manning an unsecured cash drawer.  Interestingly, there wasn't one person who was stealing tons, but many stealing just a little.  The conclusion: "Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little."  The reason being that "most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that 'good person' identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves."  In an experiment, Ariely found that cab drivers were more likely to cheat their standard fare than someone who is blind, because of what David Brooks calls "the good person construct."

Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer — part of a daily battle against evil.

But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.

The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.

Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind passenger because I’m a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.

I think this is actually an insightful and accurate observation.  I have noticed this a lot recently, more in discussions I see on the blog than in real life, but probably only because the topic of morality comes up a lot more here than it does in real life and people tend to feel the need to take some kind of moral high ground when advocating something horrible like killing all sociopaths (or even just the simple art of accusing anyone of anything), so there is a lot of self-justification going on here.  The weird thing is that many people will unashamedly admit that they're not perfect, but then go on to assert something categorically negative about sociopaths.  I guess the price of admission to the moral high ground is not what it used to be.    

In-group altruism

I happened upon two articles about the emergence and explanation of altruism within groups.  There was this New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer (sorry, not fully available to non-subcribers), which discussed the origin and development of the inclusive fitness theory.  Inclusive fitness basically holds that you are willing to be altruistic to another person in proportion to the advantage it will give your own genes in survival.  In other words, you share half of your genes with your siblings so you should be more willing to help them then, say, your cousin or even your nephew.  Here are some selections:


Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism—the act of helping someone else, even if it comes at a steep personal cost—as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life was such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why would natural selection favor a behavior that made us less likely to survive? In “The Descent of Man,” Darwin wrote, “He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.” And yet, as Darwin knew, altruism is everywhere, a stubborn anomaly of nature. Bats feed hungry brethren; honeybees defend the hive by committing suicide with a sting; birds raise offspring that aren’t their own; humans leap onto subway tracks to save strangers. The sheer ubiquity of such behavior suggests that kindness is not a losing life strategy.

For more than a century after Darwin, altruism remained a paradox. The first glimmers of a solution arrived in a Bloomsbury pub in the early nineteen-fifties. According to legend, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane was several pints into the afternoon when he was asked how far he would go to save the life of another person. Haldane thought for a moment, and then started scribbling numbers on the back of a napkin. “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one,” Haldane said. “Or to save eight cousins but not seven.” His drunken answer summarized a powerful scientific idea. Because individuals share much of their genome with close relatives, a trait will also persist if it leads to the survival of their kin. According to Haldane’s moral arithmetic, sacrificing for a family member is just a different way of promoting our own DNA.

The idea of group altruism is interesting to me.  My father grew up in a large family and he has always prized a certain submission to the will of the group.  I quickly learned to speak in terms of "maximizing utility" for everyone concerned, in a very Bentham/Utilitarianism type of way, and my family would follow my plan over others.

Of course, as a sociopath I'm supposed to be a "cheater" -- someone who pretends to work for the good of the group while secretly not pulling my weight or siphoning off a disproportional amount of community output.

But I don't, or not always.  I guess it's because unlike bats or bees I'm not surrounded by idiots half the time.  Especially when I'm with my family or close friends who know better, it would be very difficult to defraud them consistently.  Maybe because I'm human and not a bat or a bee I can make higher cognitive determinations like it is better for me to be part of a group in which I support them and they support me in turn.

Could there be another reason why I engage in this sort of in-group altruism?  Is it because I don't just need specific things from the people in my group but actually need to associate with people in general?  From this Psychology Today post:

The idea that humans have a need to belong to social groups is so fundamental in psychology that one of the seminal papers on this topic has been cited 2572 times since its publication in 1995. Belonging doesn't just feel good — it's often essential for our very survival, even in modern times.

Do I also have an evolutionary drive to "belong"?  I actually think that I do, or at least I can feel in-group loyalty.  How about others?

On cheating

A sociopathic reader wrote on various topics that I may feature from time to time.  This one was regarding cheating:


Love can be a profoundly intellectual marvel. It is not possible to be barren here, unless you have no values whatsoever. Anyone can recognize that a human is copacetic, pleasant, and that he or she contributes to your pleasure. Anyone can love. My real dilemma is settling down and staying hooked.

I've tried to propose open relationships, and, for a time, did everything I could to avoid the “girlfriend” label, but people are fairly predictable, and, since I do aspire to have a few of them like me, they tend to choke on that toxin.    

I don't get why I have to stay with one man or woman. Even if I love him or her to death, I hunger for more, if only to make them interesting again in terms of how I feel.

It's easier now then it used to be. Before I came to concede that I was never going to connect with another emotionally, I'd get irate when I could not, and would leave for another in the pursuit of fresh passion. Presently, sex is casual, and I don't expect to be wrapped up in the ones I am with. When I decide to cheat, as they put it, it's because I am searching for an absorbing way to pass the hours, and exploring is an effective method of occupying my attention. It's never an insult against the others, and I wish I could kill their jealousy.

In the meantime, I hold that I am entitled to my privacy, and it's nobody's business who else shares a bed with me – not even the business of those already in it. 

Same sex cheating

I am always sort of charmed to read textbook examples of sociopaths, particularly when they include personality traits that aren't actually really emphasized (or even included) in most textbooks, like ambiguous sexuality.  These descriptions are selections from a reader about her and her boyfriend (sorry for the choppy editing):

I'm uber reasonable, I like to travel a lot, I like to experience different cultures, most of my boyfriends have been foreign, they bring something different to the table and I value that, its interesting to see life from a different point of view and hear different perspectives. I am always right ;-) but there is not ever just one right answer and I like to have my world expanded by hearing other versions. I like that my bloke presents yet another perspective on life.

Re the sexuality thing, I'm pretty certain that he is "creeping on the down low." There have just been too many little incidences. Also he is always very good humoured every time I imply that he shags blokes. I'm quite sure that most men would be quite annoyed if it were not the case. 

I was chatting to a girl a few weeks ago who works with male sex workers, she said that something like 80% of these guys did not consider themselves to be gay, most have wives or girlfriends, many with established families, I found it really interesting how it seems that these guys are so able to completely separate parts of their lives so that one has absolutely no bearing on the other, quite an enviable skill. I'm very fortunate, have lived abroad, travelled a lot, good job blah blah blah, but there are things that I wish I had done. I wonder if a sociopath is more able to achieve all these goals without some of the constraints life often presents. (does that make sense?) (that's not to say that all these guys are sociopaths or that all sociopaths are shagging both sexes).

I do not want him to think that I am stupid and that I just don’t know what he is up to. Obviously I don’t know the fine details, who, where, when etc. but I know that in general he shags around and for some reason I feel the need to make sure that he knows that I know, and that I accept it as my choice, not that I’m some stupid blonde that he is managing to fool. It’s petty really on my part, I’m sure he knows that I’m not stupid (I hope!) but I just need that confirmation from him, which obviously he can’t give without admitting what he gets up to – it ain’t going to happen.

It’s like I have an internal conflict going on, I suppose it’s to do with society and how we are brought up to expect people to behave etc. Society tells me that relationships are supposed to be monogamous, open and honest. But I know in reality that is not how it works, I myself cheated on my long term boyfriend, 5 times in fact, and it was never anything to do with him. I really did love him, had I thought he would find out and get hurt I would never have done it, but I knew he wouldn’t and it was fun so I did it.  And so I have a conflict between what I think I am supposed to expect from him, what he delivers, and what I find I am able to accept in reality.

I accept it because I have done it and I’m not a sociopath, so I am in no position to tell him off for doing the same when he is ‘programmed’ to do so. I have also always known what he is like and allow him back in my life on that basis, I cannot therefore start complaining later on down the line. And at the end of the day I just like him being about, so I balance it and have the occasional spat at him. It will run its course.

As I mentioned, I caught him hitting on a guy, and obviously he has denied it since, at the time he had taken a lot of MDMA, coke and alcohol. I read on your blog that sociopaths often adopt a kind of code to live by. For my bloke being gay is a big no no culturally, so do you think that he maybe adopts a no gay code to live by day to day but that under the influence of a lot substances it slipped? I’m just looking for excuses here aren’t I, so I don’t have to face facts right? Which is weird because I have dated a couple of bisexual guys in the past, I guess it’s that not knowing thing. You get a lot of that dating a sociopath!