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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.
Winning is a natural high, right? People steal to get high. Why not cheat?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Like a whole bunch of psychological studies, it only applies to college students who incur no costs.
From what I read Bernie Madoff had a compulsion for consistency. When he played golf (and he was pretty good) he would apparently turn in an 80 every time. So I suspect that the vagaries of the market just went against his grain. This then begs the question. Did he run a Ponzi scheme because he was a crook, or did he pretty much have the wrong compulsion for the wrong industry.
I am pretty sure that I see this in other areas. For instance I was at an industrial company some years ago where an IT guy cut himself on the inside of a computer to the point where it may or may not have needed stitches. The company people freaked out. They were hinting that they would even bribe him not to report it. This got my curiosity going thinking that this injury would cause their worker's compensation rates to go up, or that it would spawn some kind of outsized investigation, but then a secratary said something like, "No, Dougie is obsessed with the fact that it has been 400 days accident free." I asked if that were true and she said it wasn't and that now for any minor injury he would hand out a week's vacation to not report it. So there was a huge sign that said 400 days accident free and everyone knew it was a lie except for Dougie's superiors.
So like most things in life I suspect that most people lie somewhere on a spectrum ranging from, "I couldn't give a shit about cheating, to, look at me the most consistent winner in the universe."
So while Madoff might have been scared that a bad report would result in fewer sales and higher redemptions, it was probably a situation where he would feel that he had somehow personally failed if he were to have to say that this year was 11% instead of 12%.
Remember: "Priming studies" (like here: being reminded of prior winning makes you more like to cheat) are notorious for showing anything under the sun and then failing to be reproducible later.
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman called priming studies the "poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_%28psychology%29#Criticism
In the Many Labs Replication Project, the two "priming studies" landed at the very bottom, showing no evidence of any real effect in the replication trials:
https://osf.io/wx7ck/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Perhaps it's just a matter of intelligence. The first game was won by the smart players. In the second game the smart ones saw the cheating opportunity and took it (perhaps even correctly deducig that that was the point of the experiment).
The stupid players saw no opportunity and no point.
So the experiment is interesting but the conclusions could be all wrong,..
I can say that I've noticed this desire in myself, although never acted on it... But in games where I know I have a skill advantage, and have won before, the temptation to cheat, as a short cut measure, becomes strong. The mentality is one of "well, I know I'm capable of getting to that point, so is it really cheating if I just skip to that part?" Yes, yes it is. And I have to remind myself of that each. freaking. time.
I thought It was just me, but it turns out to be human nature I guess?
Reporting bias occurs when the opposite result isn't ever reported. So you either see an article or you don't. If you see the article, that's because the result was "surprising". If you don't see the article, that's because it wasn't "interesting".
Trouble is, every possible result, no matter how "surprising", can occur just by chance if you do enough experiments, even if the truth isn't "interesting". Statistics works like that.
So if you keep doing all sorts of different experiments until you find one that randomly happens to look "surprising", then publish it, but never talk about all the other experimental ideas that didn't pan out, you've got yourself a case of reporting bias.
Ask yourself this: what legitimate scientific question is being answered here, and what journal and media outlets are likely to publish the opposite finding?
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?