Once you commit one dishonest act, your moral standards loosen, - TopicsExpress



          

Once you commit one dishonest act, your moral standards loosen, your self-perception as an honest person gets a little hazier, your ability to rationalize goes up, and your fudge factor margin increases. Where you draw the line between ethical and unethical, honest and dishonest, moves outward. From his research, Ariely has found that committing a dishonest act in one area of your life not only leads to more dishonesty in that one area, but ends up corrupting other areas of your life as well. “A single act of dishonesty,” he argues, “can change a person’s behavior from that point onward.” What this means is that if you want to maintain your integrity, the best thing you can do is to never take that first dishonest step. No matter how small and inconsequential a choice may seem at the time, it may start you down a path that tarnishes your moral compass, leads you to commit more serious misdeeds, and causes you to compromise your fundamental principles. Ariely argues that not only is preventing ourselves from taking a first dishonest step so crucial, so is curbing small infractions in society as well. While he admits that it’s tempting to dismiss first-time mistakes as no big deal, his research has shown that we “should not excuse, overlook, or forgive small crimes, because doing so can make matters worse.” Instead, by cutting down “on the number of seemingly innocuous singular acts of dishonesty…society might become more honest and less corrupt over time.” This need not involve more regulations or zero-tolerance policies, which Ariely doesn’t think are effective, but rather instituting more subtle checks to personal and public integrity, some of which we’ll discuss in the next parts in this series. Obviously, not everyone who makes one bad choice ends up morally depraved and utterly crooked. Many of us are able to make a single mistake, or even several, but then get back on track again. This is because various conditions not only make it more or less likely that we’ll make that first dishonest decision, but also increase or decrease our chances of turning ourselves around once we start down an unethical road.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:00:01 +0000

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