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ninjagoo 2 days ago

> Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly.

Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

On the contrary, a 2019 analysis [1] combined 400+ experimental treatments, 44,000+ participants, and 47 countries. Participants surrendered roughly three-quarters of the money they could have obtained through maximal lying. In repeated experiments, fewer than one participant in twenty consistently claimed the payoff-maximizing outcome. Increasing the potential reward from a few cents to approximately $50 did not cause people to approach maximal dishonesty.

In a field experiment [2] with 17,000+ apparently lost wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries, people were generally more likely to report wallets containing money than wallets containing no money. The effect appeared in 38 of the 40 countries. The researchers’ follow-up evidence pointed to concern for the owner and an increased aversion to thinking of oneself as a thief when more money was involved.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA14673

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax5034

brynnbee a day ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think these studies meaningfully replicate the motivation of real life situations where there is either a lot of money on the line or emotional investment. Anyone can be honest when it's $20 on the line

Grimeton a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This is so typical. It is known for millennia that people tend to steal and enrich themselves whenever an opportunity arises. Common sense so to say.

And you show up with a study.

Sorry but I had to point this out.

It's not all people, but always people.

ninjagoo a day ago | parent [-]

> It is known for millennia that people tend to steal and enrich themselves whenever an opportunity arises. Common sense so to say.

People also believed in witches, ghosts and other paranormal and magic phenomena for millennia. Didn't make it reality.

> It's not all people, but always people.

Approx. 1% of the general population are estimated to be psychopaths, with broader estimates going up to 4.5% depending on which diagnostic tool is used. [1]

Rates are significantly higher in specific environments - for example, 15% to 25% in prison inmates. [2]

Does it make sense to tar the 95% for the sins of the 5%?

> Does it make sense to tar the 95% for the sins of the 5%?

Only if one exhibits psychopathic tendencies :-)

There's also the bagel study [3] that shows, among many other interesting stats, that folks up the corporate ladder tend to steal more than those on the lower rungs. Some of the other stats in that study support the notion that people are generally honest, in line with the formal experiments.

Since most society is organized hierarchically, negative behavior at the top can propagate throughout the org. Google's 'Don't be evil' motto comes to mind.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8374040/

[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-m...