Hidden Brain - Liar ,Liar, Liar (1)

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805808486/liar-liar-liar

Liar, Liar, Liar

 

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

 

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:

When we think about dishonesty, we mostly think about the big stuff.

 

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

 

BILL CLINTON: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down - thousands of people...

 

LANCE ARMSTRONG: I've said it for longer than seven years. I have never doped.

 

ANTHONY WEINER: The answer is I did not send that tweet. My system was hacked. I was pranked. It was a fairly common one.

 

+ prank : 장난, 장난을 치다, 속이다 

 

SCOTT LONDON: He goes, hey, I know a way that we can both make a little bit of money. You give me information. I'm going to trade on it. We'll split it three ways.

 

+ trade on : 이용하다 (exploit)

 

VEDANTAM: This kind of dishonesty seems so blatant, so wrong.

 

+ blatant : 노골적인, 뻔한 

 

DAN ARIELY: And you say to yourself, wow, I could have never done this. Like, this is a different kind of a person. That's not me. I can't possibly be like that person.

 

VEDANTAM: This is Dan Ariely, researcher and author of the book "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: H ow We Lie To Everyone - Especially Ourselves." Dan says the truth about dishonesty might surprise you.

 

ARIELY: What separates honest people from not honest people is not necessarily character. It's opportunity.

 

VEDANTAM: We'll also talk about Dan's personal life and what a life-threatening injury taught him about deception and self-deception.

 

ARIELY: It's kind of embarrassing. Do we have to - do we have to talk about that? Can we talk about something else?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

VEDANTAM: Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He's the author of the book "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty." Dan, welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN.

 

ARIELY: My pleasure, so nice to be here.

 

VEDANTAM: Dan, with many Americans thinking about their taxes right now, I want to start with a counter-intuitive question. Why don't more people cheat on their taxes? Most of us know the IRS is overwhelmed and overstretched. So rationally, more people ought to get away with cheating than actually do.

 

+ counter-intuitive : 직관적이지 않은

+ overstretch 과하게 하다. 감당할 수 있는 것 이상을 하다

+ rationally : 이성적으로, 합리적으로 

 

ARIELY: Well, first of all, just by saying it, maybe you've increased the proportion of people who'll cheat this year.

 

VEDANTAM: (Laughter).

 

ARIELY: So maybe you're contributing to the issue. But the truth is that you're absolutely right. When we look at dishonesty, we often look at the half-empty part of the glass. And we look at all the things that people do badly. But the reality is that we are really quite wonderful. We don't have to go all the way to taxes. We can think about all kinds of other cases.

 

So in the last few years, almost every time I go to a restaurant, I ask the waiter if there's a way to eat and escape without paying. And, you know, sometimes I get strange looks. Sometimes they ask me for my credit card. But they always give me good advice. They say things like, wait for a big party to come. Go to the bathroom. There's an alley. I mean, they have suggestions of how to escape without paying. And then I ask them, how often does it happen? And they say, very rarely. And in fact, they say sometimes, people leave the restaurant without paying because, you know, we forget whether we've paid or not paid. We don't pay attention. And people call back and pay over the phone. So there's a lot of goodness in us.

 

+ I get strange looks

+ alley : 골목

 

And in fact, the surprising thing for a rational economist would be, why don't people steal more, right? Why don't we take advantage? So we do have some internal moral conscience. We have internalized the values of society. And we don't need anybody around us. We don't need prison sentences. We don't need to be afraid. We make our own judgment of what's right and wrong. And we adhere to those decisions - not perfectly but to a very large degree.

 

+ sentence : 선고, 선고하다가 있다. 여기서는 '징역형'

 

VEDANTAM: One of the things that I find interesting about what you're saying is that in some ways, people are often unthinkingly honest. In other words, they're not actually asking themselves, what room do I have to be dishonest? They're actually honest just because it's a rule that they're following. And of course, much of your work has focused on the flip side of that, which is that people are also unthinkingly dishonest. It's not just people who are trying to be dishonest, but people who are making small lapses, small slips without really thinking about it very clearly.

 

+ unthinkingly : 생각없이 

+ lapse : 실수, 깜빡함

+ what room do I have to be dishonest? : 'What room' means 'How much'. So it says 'You have to be dishonest', in o ther words, I have no choice, but to be dishonest. 

 

ARIELY: That's exactly right. And, you know, when we think about dishonesty, we often think about kind of big cases of people who've, you know, done terrible things. And in the research on dishonesty, we've done lots of lab experiments. But we've also interviewed 40 big cheaters. But what was so interesting about these discussions is without exception, all of them, when you talk to these people and you - and you try to figure out, how did they get to where they got - and you say to yourself, wow, I could have never done this. Like, this is a different kind of a person. That's not me. I can't possibly be like that person. But when instead you ask these people to tell you what was their first step, what was the first thing they did, you can say to yourself, I could have done that. I could have seen myself in that - in that case.

 

+ cheater : 사기꾼 

 

And I can give you one example. One of the guys we talked to, his name is Joe Papp. And Joe was a cyclist. He loved cycling. He loved nothing else in the world but cycling. He was in the Olympic team, the American Olympic team. And then at some point, he went back to school to finish his degree. After a few years, went back to cycling, he goes in this race. But he feels that everybody else is slightly faster. And he's incredibly frustrated, and he cries that night. And one of his friends says, here's a name for a doctor. He goes to see this doctor - white coat and the stethoscope. And the doctor prescribes to him EPO. EPO is a drug that people use for cancer that increases the production of red blood cells - really good thing if you need energy, right? It means oxygen, basically. He goes to the pharmacy. He gives him the prescription. His insurance company pays for it. He pays the deductible. He takes it to his apartment. He gives himself the first injection - then, the next day, the next injection and so on. Eventually, it's a habit.

 

+ deductible : 공제할 수 있는, 세금 공제가 가능한

 

Then he moves to another team. He finds out that everybody else is doing it. They do it more publicly. Anyway, things continue. Then there's a shortage of EPO. But he has a friend that has connection in China, on the Chinese team. And he puts him in touch with a Chinese factory who produces EPO. He imports EPO for himself. Then his friends find out about it and ask him to import for them as well. So he imports for them as well. Eventually, he's a drug dealer. Now, if you just look at Joe Papp and you say, could I ever become a drug dealer who imports EPO, you would say no. But when you look at the first step, you would ask yourself, where exactly would we stop?

Imagine yourself in his shoes. Like, it's the first day. You just came back to cycling. You do just as well as you thought you could. Everybody's faster. Don't you cry? Of course you do. A friend gives you an address for a physician. Don't you go? Of course you do. The physician gives you a prescription. Don't you go to fill it? Of course you do. You get the prescription. You have all these injections. Don't you try once? Of course you do. I mean, when exactly would we stop? And one of the frightening conclusions we have is that what separates honest people from not honest people is not necessarily character. It's opportunity, right? And if we were all in Joe's shoes, maybe we would have all been like this, exactly like that.

 

+ And he puts him in touch with a Chinese factory

+ Imagine yourself in his shoes.

 

VEDANTAM: One of the things that caught my eye recently, Dan, is that you had a paper that actually explores this very idea from the point of view of science. And this study remarkably was actually looking at how the brain operates as people were making these little deceptions.

 

ARIELY: Yeah. So the brain is really a mechanism for detecting surprising things, right? The brain is basically working on adaptation. You get to a certain level of light. In the beginning, it's surprising. And then you get used to that environment. And - and this is true across lots of things that the brain does. It turns out that the brain also reacts very strongly to a first act of lying. But then, as we keep on lying more and more, the brain kind of stop reacting to it. So we start by being aware of this maybe being a dishonest act. And we're at least aware of it. But over time, it just goes into the background. And we don't pay attention to it.

 

+ start by : ~함으로써 시작하다 

 

VEDANTAM: You've made the case in several books and articles that lying and deception is not usually about, you know, a rational cost-benefit equation where people are balancing the advantages of deception against the risk of getting caught but about something that you call the fudge factor. What's the fudge factor?

 

+ fudge : 퍼지(설탕, 버터, 우유로 만든 연한 사탕), 임시방편, 얼버무리다

 

ARIELY: Yeah. So the cost-benefit analysis, by the way, is the - kind of the standard framework in economics, right? You say to yourself, how likely am I to get caught? What will happen to me? What can I get away with? How much can I steal? And you basically do a cost-benefit analysis. We find that those things don't really matter. What we find that matters is this intricate balance between wanting to get a bit more, selfishly wanting a bit more right now - I wish I had a bit more money; I wish I had, you know, more prestige, whatever it is - and on the other hand wanting to look at ourself in the mirror and feel that we're good, honest people. We can cheat a little bit and still feel good about ourself.

 

+ intricate : 복잡한

+ prestige : 위신, 명망

 

So for example, if you're on a 65-mile-an-hour road, if you're at 68, you don't think you're speeding. So we have this ability to rationalize our actions and to basically say, yes, you know, under FBI interrogation, I would realize this is not the perfect truth. But it's OK. There still are reasons for it. I can still rationalize it. I can still explain what it is, especially when we don't think about it too carefully.

 

+ interrogation : 질문, 심문

 

VEDANTAM: Let's talk a little bit about solutions. You think that one of the things that the IRS should ask taxpayers to do is to fill out a testimonial that says, I declare that everything I say here will be the truth, only the truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God. Why do you think personal testimonials might be useful when people are filling out their tax returns?

 

+ testimonial : 추천서

 

ARIELY: Yeah. So first of all, we have data. I'll tell you about it in a second. But think about our oral tradition. When people go to court, we swear in the beginning, right? And we swear in the beginning not because we think we know already everything we've said, but we swear in the beginning because we understand, as a society, as an institution, that honesty is about the mindset. And you basically say, I swear I'll say the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And you put yourself into that state of being honest from now on.

 

+ mindset : 사고방식

 

Now, what happened over the years, lawyers got into things. And instead of using the oral tradition, we sign at the end, right? Every document, you sign at the end, not in the beginning. So all of a sudden, it's not about your mindset going in. It's about verification of the fact afterward. But you know what? When you get to the end, lying is over. It's done. Like, imagine that you would testify in court, and you wouldn't swear in the beginning. You would swear at the end. What, you would say, oh, sorry, sorry, let me go back to the third thing I said. Let me change my opinion.

 

+ testify : 증언하다, 증명하다 

 

VEDANTAM: (Laughter).

 

ARIELY: So what happened is that the legal tradition has kind of taken something that we all intuit quite basically, that honesty is about the mindset, and change it to verification. So that was the initial intuition for this. And we've done quite a few experiments. In one of them, we did it with a big insurance company. This was an insurance company that sends people letters. And it asked them, how many miles did you drive last year? And if you drove more, you pay a higher premium. You drove less; you pay a lower premium.

 

+ intuit : 직감(직관)하다

 

And people, of course, have the incentive to declare that they drove less because then, they would pay less. And they had the regular form, which you fill the numbers in and you sign at the bottom of the form. And we created a new version of the form in which people sign in the beginning. And what we saw was that people drove more by 15 percent in the condition when they signed upfront.

 

VEDANTAM: Wow.

 

ARIELY: And by the way, we've replicated it in all kinds of ways, including with the procurement officers within the U.S. government, including with taxes in a country in South America and including with a traveler insurance in Northern Europe. And in all of those cases, you get people to sign something. They get into kind of a different mental state. They remember honesty. We kind of guard ourselves against being dishonest. And then - and then people fill things in a more honest way - we're not sure perfectly honest but more honest way.

And by the way, we started by looking at the glass-half-full part of it. This is a tremendously glass-half-full story because it says we have the desire to be honest. Something about the education process gets people to want to be honest. We just need to remind people that they want to be honest, and then it works.

 

+ procurement : 조달

 

VEDANTAM: When we come back, I'm going to ask Dan about the virtues of deception and self-deception - our case study, Dan Ariely. Stay with us.

 

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

VEDANTAM: This is HIDDEN BRAIN. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When Dan Ariely was 17 years old, he was at a graduation ceremony. Flares were being sent up to celebrate, and one went off too close to him. Seventy percent of his body was burned, and he spent the next three years in a hospital. This story is hard to listen to, but Dan's injuries and the experiences he had with doctors and nurses reveal a lot about human behavior. And they changed the way Dan came to think about deception and self-deception.

 

ARIELY: It turns out that severe burns that cover all of your body don't - don't go away. I didn't know it at that time, but, you know, I'm more than 30 years later now, and my last surgery was last year. It's a gift that keeps on giving. It's a very, very difficult injury, a lot of pain in the beginning, very hard to recover. And then it keeps on - I mean, the challenges are just ongoing.

 

+ flare : 확 타는 불꽃, 확 타오르다, 나팔바지

 

VEDANTAM: So you get to the hospital. You're spending many weeks in the hospital. You're obviously in great pain. Various operations and procedures are being performed on you. Did doctors share with you how badly off you were?

 

ARIELY: No. So first of all, you know, I was in the hospital for almost three years in total. In the beginning, you know, of course, all burn patients above 30% are kind of a risk of losing their lives. And nobody told me - nobody told me that. I actually don't think anybody really told me exactly what to expect. But no, I didn't know how long it will be. I didn't know how painful it will be. I didn't understand what burns are. Nobody actually gave me this, you know, really sad view of how the future will evolve from the perspective of the burns.