Summary and Response to Ariely's Chapter 12

In Chapter 12 of Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational", he discusses an experiment that he performed that involved potentially cheating and stealing. His experiment was performed at a college dorm, where in two of the communal fridges, he put a 6-pack of Coke in one and 6-dollar bills in the other. Within about 72 hours all of the Coke was gone, but the dollar bills were still there. By doing this, Ariely was able to prove that people are much more likely to steal non-monetary items as opposed to actual cash. For some reason, Ariely pointed out that a lot of people feel less dishonest for cheating or stealing something other than cash. Ariely also talks about his own personal accounts of dishonesty where his Skype account was hacked into and he had a few hundred dollars charge into his PayPal. Ariely pointed out that he assumed it was a kid because he wouldn't expect a criminal to waste his time hacking into a PayPal account.

According to Ariely, cheating is easier when its one step removed from cash because it offers a much better incentive to the cheater and even gives them more motivation to achieve the task. His experiment was performed at a college dorm, where in two of the communal fridges, he put a 6-pack of Coke in one and 6-dollar bills in the other. He also used the example of stealing a pen as opposed to 10 cents, and how we feel worse about ourselves when we steal money as opposed to a measly pen. When money is removed from the equation, we feel more inclined to possibly take that item.  Ariely talks about the rising rates of identity theft that are seen in our world and how because someone's doing this crime behind a computer, it invokes a sense of dishonesty. We can also see this sense of dishonesty brought into other industries like insurance companies. Insurance companies can also commit fraud by improperly denying a policy holder or health care provider a benefit that is due. Ariely used an example of a friend who racked up frequent flyer miles for a vacation, and when he went to the airline to issue those miles they were blacked out. He was supposed to be given a free trip, but because of this, he now has to spend more money for his trips to rack up those miles again.