In the following chapter, Dan Ariely is talking about dishonesty.

He discusses the decline in

ethics at a time of corporate scandals and financial scams area at a rise. He examines the
likelihood of people cheating for financial gain and ways to keep them honest. The level of
integrity his experiments reveal is particularly interesting. He also finds how people
differentiate between cheating and being more likely to cheat if non-monetary items are
involved.

Ariely begins by painting a landscape of the disturbing level of dishonesty our society. He
doesn’t just refer to the theft and robberies, but also white-collar crime. All robberies in the
United States costs an estimated $525 million per year but employee theft costs an estimated
$600 billion and Tax fraud costs an estimated $350 billion dollars. There are also politicians
who accept donations and gifts from lobbyists in return for favours. There are the doctors
receiving money to promote a certain brand of medicine even if it isn’t the best for the
patient. Even geologists are accused of falsifying and exaggerating data. All of which is to
say nothing of the financial industry.