Slashdot Mirror
Why Winners Become Cheaters (washingtonpost.com)
JoeyRox writes: A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals a paradoxical aspect of human behavior — people who win in competitive situations are more likely to cheat in the future. In one experiment, 86 students were split up into pairs and competed in a game where cheating was impossible. The students were then rearranged into new pairs to play a second game where cheating was possible. The result? Students who won the first game were much more likely to cheat at the second game. Additional experiments indicated that cheating was also more likely if students simply recalled a memory of winning in the past. The experiments further demonstrated that subsequent cheating was more likely in situations where the outcome of previous competitions was determined by merit rather than luck.
That makes sense to me. If you win something based on merit it becomes part of your identity. "I'm a fast runner" or "I'm good at math." That will put you under pressure (internal and external) to make sure it happens.
Like a whole bunch of psychological studies, it only applies to college students who incur no costs.
I agree with this.
Winning one-on-one competitions is an individual skill. So is cheating. Following rules is a cooperative or social skill.
As a hunter, cheating is a valuable skill. It doesn't matter whether you catch the game by being better, or by cheating, e.g. with a snare. When you and the other hunter aren't going to share, i.e. it's a competition, what matters is that you win. Preferably every time. If your competitor's family starves, that's a win for your offspring.
If hunting together, the situation becomes different. Team sports may yield different results.
Also - what is the consequence of being caught? I would think that winners of any game that requires thinking would favor those with a rational mind. Who would also be the ones to factor in the cost of getting caught. If that is zero, well, what is the advantage to not cheating?
To understand the why can improve detection and prevention. A different ponzi scheme from the same time frame, Stanford, smells more like old fashioned greed. I have talked with Enron people and they told me that there was this insane culture of WIN. Apparently a huge amount of time was spent doing sporty things that were competitive. They both were driven to compete at all levels, but also hired and promoted people who were driven to win. So while greed and broken moral compasses were at work there, they were pushed to take risks so that they could be winners. Risks as in things with prison as a penalty, not just financial risks.
So detecting and preventing Madoff, Stanford, and Enron from both the perspective of regulators and investors it is good to understand the stories behind these goons.
This is why I love science articles like the above. They both help shape my world view and can confirm/refute some observations that I have made.
For instance an interesting one that I have seen is when people have regular access to insider information and make many successful trades, they tend to delude themselves into thinking that they are great traders. Then when the inside information supply dries up they often continue to trade with the same apparent reckless abandon that was previously supported by ill-gotten information. The consequences are pretty straightforward.
Are you saying the fact that the two games were run sequentially is itself priming the outcome of the second game? Or are you referring specifically to the other experiment where students were asked to think about a past winning experience?
The question the experiment was designed to answer was "Are winner's of previous competitions more likely to cheat in subsequent competitions?". How can a controlled study be conducted to answer this question unless the subjects are subjected to winning (and losing)? And if this cheating inclination does occur outside the confines of this experiment what's different in the real world vs the experiment? The period of time that elapses between winning one competition and competing in another?