“A lot of people can cheat. They cheat by just a little bit. When we remind people about their morality, they cheat less. When we get bigger distance from cheating, from the object of money, for example, people cheat more. And when we see cheating around us, particularly if it’s part of our own in-group, cheating goes up.”
Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, came up worth the foregoing conclusions after conducting several experiments to validate certain intuitive assumptions about the way people behave.
In the aftermath of the deluge brought about by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, there’s been a lot of reflective thinking on what went wrong. Particularly instructive was a statement made by a friend, Felino (Jun) Palafox, an architect and urban planner, that the massive destruction was “not an act of God”, but an offshoot of an accumulation of human sins of omission and commission, especially those against the environment.
Indeed, a lot of people cheated. They cheated on the environment by constructing houses in areas already known to be danger or threat zones on account of being a water basin, as in the Marikina disaster. They cheated by cutting trees indiscriminately dumping their garbage mindlessly.
So what made them behave that way? Prof. Ariely’s experiments tell us a lot. (Readers may see the website: http://www.TED.com)
For example, when offered money in return for being able to recall the Ten Commandments from memory, they were more honest than when they were asked to declare how many questions in an economics quiz did they get right. Hence, Prof. Ariely concludes that people cheat less when they are reminded about morality.
When an actor was planted in a group that was being tested for honesty, the group readily followed the cheating initiated by the actor when he was wearing the sweatshirt of their own school. But, in another experiment, they did not follow a planted actor who was wearing the sweatshirt of their archrival school. They were more honest because they did not want to act in a way that was associated with an organization that they did not want to be identified with.
This latter experiment is what prompts him to hypothesize that “when we see cheating around us, particularly with our own in-group, cheating goes up.”
Being a behavioral economist, his focus was on trying to explain what went wrong with Wall Street. So he reflects: “What happens in a situation when you pay people lots of money to see reality in a slightly distorted way? What if, instead of money, you offered them stocks, stock options, derivatives and mortgage-backed securities? Could it be that with these more distant things, it’s something many steps removed from money for a much longer time, could it be that people would cheat even more?”
With these series of rhetorical questions, he offers an explanation for the reign of greed that brought Wall Street down late last year. Then he asks, “What happens to the social environment when people see other people behave around them in certain ways?” That’s a question we need to ask ourselves in our efforts to discern what it will take to bring about meaningful change in our country.
What do these findings imply for us Filipinos?
First, we need to be reminded about morality. Who can remind us in a way that will influence us to act morally, ethically or honestly? Only a credible leader who walks the talk; one who is perceived to be clearly good, ethical and moral. President Corazon Aquino was such a sterling role model. Hence, her legacy is that of faithful stewardship and good governance. Almost two decades after she stepped down from power, the Filipino people expressed their affection for her by braving rain and fatigue during her funeral procession.
Second, when a culture of cheating predominates, people tend to look the other way and would even be in denial of the reality, until they are jolted out of their indifference or complacency. This is what happened during all these years of the Arroyo presidency, particularly after the ‘Hello Garci’ scandal.
Many people lapsed into a state of denial, allowing themselves to be deluded into adopting a defeatist mindset expressed in the query, “Eh, sino ba ang ipapalit ninyo” (“So whom you will tap to replace her?). This was after they realized that the constitutional successor, Vice President Noli de Castro did not really offer the prospect of being a significantly better President.
This seeming lack of a sense of outrage among our citizenry prompted administration lackeys to run roughshod and throw out impeachment resolutions filed against the President. Using their superior numbers to steamroller the opposition, they have also mounted an attempt to change the constitution through the constituent assembly route after the Supreme Court previously ruled against the people’s initiative mode of charter change.
And then came the fateful events of August. A sea of yellow emerged and brought forth a fresh wave of optimism that yes, the spirit of Edsa Uno is still alive. And just as the final cast of characters for the 2010 presidential derby was shaping up came the deluge. The floods could not wash all the sins of the past away.
As an old song goes, “The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.” The winds of change are upon us.
We want honest government. We want a leader who will remind us that we can be good when we want to be good, that goodness is what will make our lives better. We need a leader we can believe in, a leader who can make us believe in our capacity for change.
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