You Would Steal a Coke But Not a Dollar Bill?

I just read this post by David Chandler at MIT.

Dan Ariely did a fascinating experiment where he tested people’s morals by tempting them to steal or cheat and then recording the results. It really go me thinking, why would somebody steal a coke but not a dollar bill? That’s Dan himself below.

Quoting from MIT,

Here’s how the test worked: Ariely and his students went around and left six-packs of Coke in randomly selected dorm refrigerators all over campus. When he checked back in a few days, all of the Cokes were gone.

But when he later placed plates of six loose dollar bills in those same refrigerators, not a single bill was missing when he checked back. Even though the value was comparable–and thus the situations were supposed to be equivalent–people responded in opposite ways. Why is that?

The reason they took the cokes is because they’ve always taken cokes from refrigerators without asking and without paying. That’s how we grow up. And it takes a while to get used to being an adult, where you have to pay your own way.

Money, on the other hand, was never in the refrigerator growing up, so as we come across money we’re faced with a brand new situation and we go to consult our moral compass to decide how to act. If we have a good compass, it points us in the right direction.

For me, the next test mentioned in Chandler’s study was even more interesting. Quoting from the article (You should read it, it’s very mind-tickling),

… he gave people a test consisting of very easy math questions–but without giving them nearly enough time to finish. On average, people got four right out of 20. Then he had people take the test, score it themselves, shred the answer sheet and tell him how they did. Suddenly the average jumped to seven.

He repeated the experiment, paying people according to how many right answers they got. Same result. “Everybody cheated, but just a little.” Even when there was no chance of getting caught–the evidence was shredded and participants paid themselves from a jar of money with over $100–nobody claimed 20 right answers. They just padded their results by a bit.

But then he tried another variation: Before doing the test, he asked one group of subjects to name 10 books they had read in high school. He asked another group to name as many of the Ten Commandments as they could remember. The group that listed the books followed the same pattern as the earlier test–they all cheated a little. But the group that named the commandments was different: Nobody cheated at all!

This is very interesting. I can say that I’m not surprised. Everything that enters your mind affects your thoughts. Everything that you think about affects your actions. So contemplating morality — thinking about what is right and what is wrong; this will affect your actions.

I think this is a great reminder (from MIT News of all places) about how important it is to remember the side of our personalities that need things like meditation, spirituality, and morality — even though in front of a very busy backdrop. (Hey what do ya knowl! A picture of a busy backdrop of a city with a guy meditating.)

[That reminds me. On a related topic (you'll see how it's related if you watch the whole video), click here to see an interesting presentation from a brain scientist who had a stroke and remembered in excruciating detail how her brain systematically shut down during the ordeal.]

Think about it. Even if everybody did something simple every day like remembering that you’re supposed to love others, the world would change. Marriages would be happier. Children would get better parenting. Friends would do more to look out for each other. On a macro scale, some wars could have been avoided. All this could be accomplished if people just turned down the world’s noise for a minute every day and thought about what was really important to them… their own morals and values.

I once heard that a very large ship changes course by the turning of a very small wheel (helm). So it is with our lives I believe. Something as simple as thinking about the Ten Commandments can change us for the better.