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The 's Theory Of Internal Morality

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Intro
Wishful blindness is a lot more common than pure dishonesty - it is when someone knowingly stays oblivious to dishonesty occurring
Becker’s theory (SMORC) is that decisions about dishonesty are based on a cost-benefit analysis
An increase of police and punishments won’t necessarily decrease dishonesty
SMORC isn’t necessarily true because people have internal morality that also governs their decisions
Taking little by little is much more common than someone taking a huge amount

I know for a fact that I have looked the other way when something dishonest was going on just so that we could benefit, and at the time my conscience was convincing me that it wasn’t cheating. So I can understand how common wishful blindness really is.
I’m certain that I don’t weigh the costs and benefits on everything that I do, so I tend to agree with Ariely’s theory of internal morality being more plausible than SMORC
Something that I thought of about the stealing bit by bit part was the whole idea of pyramid schemes, where you take little by little from certain people and make huge amounts of profit while doing so.

Chapter 1
Does a study on how students cheat using the matrix experiment
Finds that many cheat by a little but few cheat by a lot
When more money got involved the amount of cheating dropped (internal morality)
When people were less likely to be caught the level of cheating remained the same
The thought of getting caught doesn’t really affect when someone might cheat
Behavior

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