Ep. 66: Liar, Liar : NPR

What separates honest people from not honest people is not necessarily character. It's opportunity... rationally, more people ought to get away with cheating than actually do.... the flip side ... is that people are also unthinkingly dishonest... small slips without really thinking about it ...
the brain reacts very strongly to a first act of lying... as we keep on lying ...the brain kind of stop reacting to it... it just goes into the background... when people go to court, we swear in the beginning... honesty is about the mindset... Every document, you sign at the end... it's not about your mindset going in. It's about verification of the fact afterward...
we created a new version of the form in which people sign in the beginning... people drove more by 15 percent ... when they signed upfront... We just need to remind people that they want to be honest...
self-deception has been widely criticized... But ... if we don't lie to ourselves ever, life becomes often unbearably difficult...
when we look at personality tests ... maybe risk-takers cheat more. No. Maybe intelligent people. No. Creative people cheat more... cheating is all about being able to tell a story about why what we want is actually OK.