Psychologists reveal why politicians and bankers appear to be driven to cheat and lie... (and what we could do to make society more moral)

Psychologists carrying out recent experiments into dishonesty and cheating discovered that all around the world, in all types of culture, people cheat the same and their findings rejected the standard theory of dishonesty that people rationalise and weigh up the benefit of being dishonest against the cost.  So the potential consequence, fear of prison or even the death penalty, is not a very effective deterrent.

The crucial factors determining whether people were likely to be dishonest, were actually things like :

• culture - if people saw their peers cheating and getting away with it, getting rewarded for their dishonesty, they were far more likely to cheat themselves
• benefiting others - being convinced that others were going to benefit from their dishonesty - This perhaps explains why politicians might lie before an election, a belief that others would ultimately benefit - the lies become justified
• being one stage removed - for instance from money, from actual cash.  People were more likely to cheat in the experiments where they got tokens which they could then exchange for cash, than experiments where their dishonesty rewarded them directly with dollars in their hand

All of this does seem to present some insight into why bankers and politicians (those with all the power in society) seem so driven to be dishonest. 

Psychologists were also interested in what was likely to make people cheat less, and it turns out that being reminded somehow of moral values before taking part in the experiments caused the rate of dishonesty to actually go down.  So being asked to name the 10 commandments or swearing on the bible before the cheating experiments caused participants to be less dishonest.  Even when atheists swore on the bible - they cheated less!

People also appear to respond more morally when given the opportunity to confess to previous dishonesty and start again - to open a new page.  And this was perhaps the value of catholic confession in the past; when you give people the opportunity to acknowledge they haven't been as good as they would like, they do seem, for a while at least, to enjoy that sense of being absolved. 

Most of us don't have that opportunity these days to disclose our darker, more vulnerable side in an environment where we won't be blamed, but we'll be understood - the possible exception being when we are in therapy - this can offer huge psychological release, to express feelings and thoughts and stuff we've done which the world outside the therapy room would perhaps judge and condemn.

So it's possible to identify why people are less honest now than they might have been in the past - a greater culture of dishonesty combined with much less focus now on moral values (when is the last time you watched a TV show which even hinted at the idea it's better to have good moral values!)

The psychologists concluded that there is little point in just changing the personnel at the head of banking, politics etc.  It's the whole culture that needs to be addressed, a whole new model needs to be created if we want our societies to regain some of those positive moral values previous generations grew up with and lived by.