Question

(25 Points)

Summarize how Levitt and Dubner logically support their argument that cheating exists when there is high incentive, but that the majority of people are honest.

Answer 1

According to Levitt and Dubner, authors of the notable bestseller "Freakonomics", students have always had the reason to cheat - to get higher grades, which eventually prove to be a way to a better social standing. However, teachers also began to cheat, because now they also have an incentive to do it, because their jobs often depend on their students' success. A whole school in Chicago was on the verge of shutting down because of low grades, and teachers were caught cheating, so as to preserve their jobs. They cheated because they had an incentive. However, according to Levitt and Dubner's research, it's still the minority of teachers that will cheat (about 5%), whereas the majority of them is honest. The same goes for sumo wrestlers, who will often cheat because they aren't satisfied with the low wages most of them get.

Answer 2

Feldman has also reached some of his own conclusions about honesty, based more on his experience than the data. He has come to believe that morale is a big factor—that an office is more honest when the employees like their boss and their work. He also believes that employees further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down below. He got this idea after delivering for years to one company spread out over three floors—an executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales, service, and administrative employees. (Feldman wondered if perhaps the executives cheated out of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. What he didn’t consider is that perhaps cheating was how they got to be executives.)There is a tale, “The Ring of Gyges,” that Feldman sometimes tells his economist friends. It comes from Plato’s Republic. A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates —who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like Feldman’s economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible.

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