Honest People

Lots of us are able to cheat a little [bit:fit] and still think of ourselves as honest people. Dan Ariely is a professor of behavior [economics:economy] at Duke University. His latest book, The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, explains how creativity makes us better liars - even to ourselves. Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, no, this not real cheating. So if you think that the [main:major] mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance [feeling:healing] good about ourselves. On the one hand we get some satisfaction, some utility from thinking of ourselves as honest, moral, [wonderful:powerful] people. On the other hand we try to benefit from cheating. So rationalization is what allows you to live with some cheating and not pay a cost in terms of your own view of yourself. What kind of people would be able to [rationalize:realize] better than other people? Better storytellers, right? Creative people, right? Because if you're creative, you find more ways to cheat and still tell yourself a story about why this is okay.