So, once again I was unable to think of any songs that really went with this particular topic and the tradebook in and of itself so here is the music I am listening to as I write this post
So for my trade book I chose to read "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty; How We Lie to Everybody- Especially Ourselves" by Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely was born April 29, 1967 and currently is employed at Duke University where he is a professor of psychology as well as behavioral economics. Ariely is also the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight ( according to the TCAH's website, their main goal is to "develop great insights about an extensive and diverse set of research projects")
Ariely earned his B.A. in psychology from Tel Aviv University. He then got his M.A. and PhD in cognitive psych at the University of North Carolina as well as a second doctorate in business administration from Duke University. Ariely has taught at MIT, and Duke, and is considered one of the best behavioral economists. He has published many studies as well as three books.
I would certainly call this book credible for many reasons; not only does his work academically show that he is credible, but also throughout the book itself he cited many studies that were done as well as personal stories that work to back up what he is saying in this book.
So before I go any further into this book, the main reason I chose this book (besides the fact that I missed the original sign up and had a smaller list than normal, which of course is my own fault) is the title really caught my attention. This again is for 2 main reasons, one of which is due to my personality (I am a very suspicious person and have an incredibly hard time trusting people) and the other reason that I chose this book was the title really stuck out to me. I have ADHD so it is hard for me to keep focused on things if they don't immediately grab my attention, so when I came across this title and it caught my attention in the way it did I figured hey why not?! And boy am I glad I picked this book. Not only did the book present interesting facts about lying, it gave many real world examples and Ariely showed how his research applied to many different areas such as golf, pharma reps and academics. Areily also talked about the role that money and incentives played a role in the levels of dishonesty and how feeling like you owe someone (be it a person, group of people, company or so forth) can influence your perception of something at a physiological level (We'll look into these examples more later). The application of Ariely's theories and research to everyday life were not only interesting but often times incredibly funny and/or shocking, which helped to keep my attention throughout the entire book. Ariely did not only focus on lying but also on things such as how cognitive load affects instinctive desires, "ego depletion" ( resisting temptation takes considerable effort and energy, and the more you say no and resist temptation as the day goes on, the more likely you are to succumb to temptation later), and more.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever lied (which, let's be honest ;). is everyone), and when I say everyone, I really mean everyone (within reason, i.e not small children who would not understand it) regardless of if they have a background in psychology or not. The way the book was written makes it easy to follow and understand regardless of the amount of psychology someone has in their background, however I do feel that those with a psychology background are likely to get more from the book than those without.
While Ariely uses many real world examples, many of them applied to either activities I don't participate in or professions I am not in nor deal with on a normal day to day basis, this got me thinking about how examples of these topics played a part in my everyday life.
First off there are not that many times I have found myself falling for and/or doing any of the things mentioned in the book, call it ignorance or whatever, but it is true, I really did struggle when it came to find ways to apply it to my life in more ways than just being more aware of how we lie to/about ourselves in different situations. One of the examples that I could come up with, however, deals with a topic covered in the beginning of the book and how we can become blinded by our own motivations and in particular the "hidden cost of favors". I am one of those people who tend to feel indebted to others for even the smallest things, that is how I have always been. The book talked about how that feeling of being indebted to someone/something can "color our view, making us more inclined to help that person in the future". This was shown in a study done by Ann Harvey, Ulrich Kirk, George Denfield, and Read Montague and the Baylore College of Medicine. The results of this study (focusing on favors and what happens when we feel indebted) tended to suggest that once we feel indebted, whether it be towards a person or an organization, we become "partial to anything related to the giving party". This got me thinking about myself. When people do something for me, give me something, or just are there for me when I need a friend, I feel a HUGE need to repay them for whatever it is that they did. There have been times, many many times, where said person keeps telling me that I don't owe them anything, but I can not stop feeling like I owe them until I repay them. The feeling is overwhelming and is very strong for me. I often go out of my way to repay them but it is as though it is something I HAVE to do.
Then I read about the "I Knew It All Along" theory (in a sense) and decided to do a mock version of his idea (to eliminate the tendency for people to come up to him after the show and say that they weren't surprised by the results because they "knew it all along", Ariely had audience members vote on what they believed the outcome was or write down what they think happened. After that people rarely gave him the whole "I knew it all along"speech) So what did I do? I found a bunch of different facts online (some dealing with music, other with famous people, and finally geography/history) and tested this out on 3 of my friends over a two day span. The first day I would pull the whole "hey did you know...." and they usually responded with "of course" or "yes". Well the next day I would turn it into a question of sorts and even though it was the same information, many of them proved that they didn't in fact "know"
(an example of this would be: "did you know Hitler was Times Man of the Year in 1938?" vs "do you know who Times Man of the Year was in 1938)
My results were that NOBODY was able to correctly answer the question that they had all insisted they knew only a day before.
So what did I like about this book and what didn't I like about this book. I loved how this book kept you interested throughout the book and showed how we lie to ourselves and others more than we think. To me that was its biggest strength was just how wonderfully it was written as to be able to hold your attention throughout the book, which due to my ADHD is hard enough haha. However I did not like the way the book was set up (and perhaps that is my fault for having it on the Kindle) as well as how while it did give many real life examples of these theories being played out or what inspired him to look into a particular idea and so forth were generally unrealtable to myself as someone still in college.
So what is the "take home message" of the book? Dishonesty and honesty have a lot to do with our motivations, one where we want to benefit from cheating, the other is that while we want to benefit from cheating, we also want to be able to think of ourselves as good people. There are many factors that increase dishonesty and many that decrease dishonesty and some that have no affect on the level of dishonesty. Those that increase dishonesty include our ability to rationalize the lying, creativity, and conflicts of interest, whereas moral reminders and supervision decrease the levels of dishonesty. Interestingly money and probability of being caught have no effect on our levels of dishonesty.
Ariely, Dan. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---especially Ourselves.
New York: Harper, 2012.
Info about his education and birthday were provided by the wikipedia page for Dan Ariely (as much as I hate using wikipedia it was the only site I could find that gave me the biographical information needed)
"Dam Ariely." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 9 April 2013. Web. 4 April. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Education_and_academic_career>
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