JP

Flashcards: Why Good People (Pages 13-35)

Page 13: 2. What is my price? Integrity as supply and demand

  • Core idea: People may have an innate sense of right and wrong, and a preference for integrity, but integrity itself can be “for sale” at a certain price. The Lincoln story illustrates how integrity can be priced: Lincoln refuses bribes even as the bribe amount increases, saying, “You were nearing my price!” This raises the question: does everyone have a price, and if so, what is yours?
  • Innate qualities vs. situational temptations: To answer this, the chapter looks at whether integrity is fixed or responsive to incentives, comparing human restraint to market dynamics of supply and demand.
  • Innate resistance to temptation: Michael Lewis and colleagues studied 3- and 5-year-old children to see if they could resist temptation. Experimental setup: a researcher leaves a tempting toy in the room and tells the child not to look; afterward the child is asked if they looked.
    • Three-year-olds: 38\% looked when left alone; about 50% lied about whether they looked, and roughly half of those who lied were lying about it. The observed behavior shows strong temptation resistance is not universal, and lying begins early.
    • Five-year-olds: All denied looking, but two-thirds actually had looked. So lying about temptation increases with age, even as self-control can improve over time.
  • Interpretation and implications: Temptation resistance appears to be linked to developmental factors (speaking and social learning) and may correlate with later responsibility; higher IQ was associated with more lying in this study, suggesting that temptation and the ability to rationalize temptation can co-evolve.
  • Practical takeaway: Understanding one’s price helps identify environments to avoid if temptation is likely (e.g., high-stakes financial roles). If money burns a hole in your pocket, avoid financial roles; if you lash out under stress, avoid high-stress jobs; integrity markets mirror financial markets: sold out is sold out.
  • Shakespeare reference: “For who so firm that cannot be seduced?” emphasizes that everyone has a price; the question is what is yours, and what happens when the price moves for people you depend on.
  • Key questions for self-assessment: Do you know your price? How elastic is the price for those you depend on? What are the conditions under which your integrity might slip?

Page 14: 2. What is my price? Integrity as supply and demand (continued)

  • Practical framing: If you know your price, you can map out situations to avoid or structure to reduce temptation. The analogy to supply and demand helps explain how incentives shape behavior.
  • Situational awareness: Depending on the market (workplace, contracts, job roles), temptations may rise or fall. The message remains: knowing your price helps you stay away from prey-to-temptation situations.
  • Takeaway: The same logic that governs markets—prices adjust to incentives—applies to personal integrity. If the price is too favorable to compromise, you should decline to engage.

Page 15: 3. Bagels at work: honesty and dishonesty

  • Context: Many workplaces are moving to self-service systems to reduce cashiers, raising concerns about small temptations.
  • The bagel story (Paul Feldman, Center for Naval Analyses): Feldman ran a “bagels with a collection box” model to study everyday honesty.
    • Feldman began by buying bagels for colleagues; later, he turned this into a business model with a money box. In his department, 95% of takings were paid; after making it a profession, takings dropped to 91% initially, and over 20 years fell to 87%, with a temporary 2% rise after 9/11. Only about one money box was stolen per year.
    • The essential finding: most people act honestly when paying for small items like bagels; roughly 1 in 7 (≈\frac{1}{7} \approx 14.3\%) abuse the opportunity. In Feldman’s data, about 5% slipped more as time passed.
    • Early in the bagel experiment, dishonesty appeared as a relatively small but persistent leakage; in some contexts, integrity erodes over time when the system makes it easy to take small items without paying.
  • Broader evidence of petty dishonesty:
    • Cashiers sometimes fail to give correct change; in one study, 16% failed to return change; in another, more than 60% failed change for reasons that included carelessness or dishonesty.
    • Corporate misconduct survey (KPMG): over a year, 21% witnessed expense overclaims, 18% saw theft of organizational property, and 15% observed improper acceptance of gifts.
  • Takeaways about petty sins and organizational ethics:
    • The “peanuts” of petty offenses can accumulate into large losses; sometimes leaders rationalize petty theft as insignificant, which undermines ethics.
    • Trust and cashier roles can matter: cashiers are not immune to missteps; this suggests the need for robust controls even in roles designed to reduce costs.
    • The “bagels” data illustrate that small temptations are pervasive and cumulative; organizations should not trivialize petty misconduct.
  • Important quotes and implications:
    • “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” Small-scale temptations matter because they can reflect and seed larger ethical declines.
    • The balance between eliminating cashiers and accepting petty theft risk should be carefully managed; trust and accountability are core to integrity in the workplace.
  • Additional observations:
    • The broader context asks whether petty misdemeanors are more or less likely to occur than major offenses; research on temptation levels suggests that small sins can be as common or more dangerous than large sins over time.
    • The section connects everyday behavior to large-scale organizational ethics and to the relevance of controlling minor leakage before it scales up.

Page 16: 3. Bagels at work: honesty and dishonesty (continued)

  • Additional data on Feldman’s bagel operation:
    • Initial years showed relatively high honesty (≈91\%), but this declined gradually to 87\% over two decades, with a small rebound of +2\% after 9/11.
    • The data illustrate that integrity at work for small, routine purchases can drift downward over long periods, especially in settings lacking robust monitoring.
  • Implications for organizational design:
    • Even trusted cashiers are fallible; trust must be combined with checks, controls, and accountability.
    • Small, habitual temptations can erode trust and integrity if not bounded by systems and culture.

Page 17: 3. Bagels at work: honesty and dishonesty (continued)

  • Comparisons and nuances:
    • In Feldman’s professional bagel business, the loss rate remained modest (≈3-4\% range of non-payment over long periods), but the fact that loss existed even at low levels shows the ubiquity of temptation.
    • The contrast between initial high payment rates (≈95\%) and later rates (≈87-91\%) demonstrates a drift in integrity over time in a real workplace environment.
  • Variations in temptation by gender and context:
    • The book indicates that everyday temptations are not uniformly resisted; the environment and incentives shape behavior, and small opportunities accumulate into measurable losses.

Page 18: 3. Bagels at work: honesty and dishonesty (continued)

  • More on petty misconduct:
    • Petty temptations extend to everyday office goods (stationery, toilet paper, milk/sugar) and other small items taken without permission.
    • Statistical snapshot (American workforce, KPMG): petty misconduct is not rare: over a year, a notable share of the workforce observes or engages in petty theft or misstatement.
  • Practical implication for organizations:
    • The culture of integrity is fragile and easily eroded by seemingly trivial offenses; leadership must address petty sins to prevent larger-scale misconduct.
    • The “barrel vs rotten apple” metaphor is insufficient alone; environmental culture (barrel/orchard) can be a better lens for understanding how norms shape behavior.

Page 19–20: 4. Egoism versus altruism: the theory of the warm glow and the helping hand

  • Core debate: Does pure altruism exist, or are helping behaviors driven by self-interest (the warm glow)?
  • Lincoln parable revisited: Lincoln helps the piglets to gain inner peace; he explains that helping is ultimately for his own peace of mind. This is the so-called warm glow explanation.
  • Warm glow theory (James Andreoni): People donate or help not only to benefit others but also to feel better about themselves; internal motives matter, and helping yields psychological benefits.
  • Evidence for genuine altruism:
    • Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello (toddlers, ~1.5 years): when faced with others’ problems, children helped in scenarios where there was no apparent reward or praise. 92% helped at least once; in pen-on-floor scenarios, two-thirds helped, compared to 1/4 in control; most helping occurred very quickly (in the first 10 seconds) without prompting.
    • Interpretation: Very young children show spontaneous helping behavior that appears to be intrinsic, suggesting a form of pure altruism.
  • Adult altruism and empathy:
    • Daniel Batson and colleagues demonstrate that adults are more likely to help when they feel empathy for the person in need, even when costs are higher than benefits.
    • Empathy is driven by seeing need, valuing well-being, and perspective-taking.
  • Workplace relevance:
    • Organizations embody altruistic values in mission statements (e.g., GlaxoSmithKline, Microsoft, Philips) that emphasize improving lives and serving customers.
    • Practical ethic: The workplace often requires balancing serving others with earning; ethical behavior often involves costs or sacrifices that create a “warm glow” payoff.
  • Key implication: Altruism in the workplace is often motivated by a blend of genuine concern and internal rewards; the boundary between self-interest and altruism is nuanced, but both motives can drive constructive behavior.

Page 21: 4. Egoism versus altruism: the theory of the warm glow and the helping hand (continued)

  • How altruism translates to practice:
    • Serving others can create non-monetary returns (e.g., reputation, morale, loyalty) that help the organization in the long run.
    • The practical art of business lies in balancing helping and earning to create win-win situations, with serving preceding earning.
  • Real-world example:
    • A bank director describes a customer-centric approach built on long-term relationships (customer-oriented for 100+ years), sometimes including concessions such as postponing interest payments to sustain a client relationship.
    • This illustrates how serving customers can help create durable value and loyalty, aligning ethical behavior with business success.

Page 22: 5. What you expect is what you get: the Pygmalion and Golem effects

  • Core phenomenon: The expectations managers hold about employees shape their behavior, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
  • Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal & Jacobson): In an IQ-kindergarten experiment, teachers were led to believe certain students were “promising.” After eight months, those students showed greater IQ gains due to warmer interactions, more challenging material, more opportunities to respond, and higher-quality feedback.
    • Four mechanisms identified:
    • Warmer social interactions and attention
    • More challenging materials
    • More response opportunities
    • Higher-quality feedback
  • Golem effect: Conversely, low expectations lead to poorer outcomes and behavior, reinforcing the initial low expectations.
  • Practical implications:
    • The manager’s expectations can drive employees’ behavior and performance, creating a self-fulfilling loop.
    • A leadership style that consistently communicates and models high expectations can produce upward spirals in performance, whereas negative expectations can produce downward spirals.
  • Important caveats:
    • There are limits to the power of expectations; reality is not entirely malleable, but expectations do influence outcomes.
  • Broader takeaway:
    • Perceptions shape performance; being mindful of one’s expectations and how they are communicated matters for organizational ethics and effectiveness.

Page 23–24: 5. What you expect is what you get: the Pygmalion and Golem effects (continued)

  • Continued discussion of the Pygmalion and Golem effects:
    • The effects operate even when expectations are not explicitly stated; the mere presence of expectations can influence behavior.
    • Positive expectations can win commitment, responsibility, and improved behavior; negative expectations can trap teams in underachievement.
  • Conclusion:
    • The environment and leaders’ beliefs help create a climate that either fosters integrity and responsibility or allows for deterioration and misconduct.
  • Practical caution:
    • Use expectations as a tool to foster positive performance, but avoid overpromising or setting unrealistic standards that can backlash if not supported with adequate resources.

Page 25–27: 6. Self-image and behavior: the Galatea effect

  • Core concept: The Galatea effect focuses on self-image—how my own view of my abilities and ethics shapes my behavior.
  • Self-efficacy and ethics:
    • People who see themselves as capable and ethical tend to act in ways consistent with that self-image, reinforcing favorable outcomes.
    • Henry Ford quote: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” This highlights how self-perception drives actual performance and behavior.
  • Autonomous vs heteronomous self-view:
    • Heteronomous: seeing oneself as a product of circumstances; more likely to yield to pressure and temptation.
    • Autonomous: seeing oneself as the author of actions; more likely to resist coercion and act ethically.
  • Experimental evidence (Vohs & Schooler): priming self-image affects cheating behavior.
    • Participants did a math test with a supposed software glitch; some were primed with the idea that free will exists, others with the idea that it does not.
    • Results: Weaker belief in free will (primed) led to more cheating (~45% more) than those primed with free will; those primed with free will were less inclined to cheat.
    • Additional point: Priming free will reduces unethical behavior; priming determinism increases it.
  • Broader implications:
    • Self-image is malleable and can be shaped by primes and cues in the environment; this has broad implications for ethics and behavior in the workplace.
    • The Galatea effect extends to organizational ethics: when employees see themselves as autonomous and responsible, they are more likely to act accordingly.

Page 26–27: 6. Self-image and behavior: the Galatea effect (continued)

  • Implications for organizational design:
    • Cultivating a self-image of autonomy in employees can promote ethical behavior and resilience to coercion or pressure.
    • Workplace cues and norms that reinforce autonomy can help sustain ethical conduct, especially under competition or stress.

Page 28–31: 7. Self-knowledge and mirages: self-serving biases and the dodo effect

  • Core concept: Self-knowledge is distorted by biases; people overestimate their own abilities and ethics—a phenomenon captured by the dodo effect.
  • Self-assessment examples:
    • In a large organization, 87% of employees rated themselves as above average on a five-point scale, while only 3% rated themselves below average; managers rated 83% of employees above average, and only 5% below average.
    • This discrepancy (average not being average) signals a widespread bias toward overestimating one’s own qualities.
  • The dodo effect and the self-serving bias:
    • People use internal attributions for successes and external attributions for failures (self-serving attribution theory) to maintain self-esteem and image.
    • Self-handicapping: people create excuses to rationalize poor performance ahead of time (e.g., spending too little time on a task so that if it fails, they can blame lack of time rather than abilities).
  • Ethical mirages:
    • People overestimate their ethics due to biases, leading to more risky decisions and misguided self-perceptions.
    • Overconfidence and biased self-perception can hinder critical evaluation of ethical dilemmas and lead to a perception of fairness that isn’t aligned with reality.
  • Consequences for collaboration:
    • If participants perceive their own contributions as excessive (e.g., exceeding 100%), they may be less willing to collaborate, and others may view them as egotistical, possibly undermining teamwork.
  • Unpacking technique to reduce bias:
    • An intervention used in studies shows unpacking group contributions reduces the overestimation: from 139\% to 121\% after prompting participants to estimate others’ contributions before stating their own.
  • Practical implication:
    • Be aware of self-serving biases and use strategies (like unpacking) to improve accuracy of self-assessment and team collaboration.

Page 32–34: 8. Apples, barrels and orchards: dispositional, situational and systemic causes

  • Core message: Behavior results from a mix of disposition, situation, and systemic environment, not from individuals alone.
  • The rotten-apple metaphor, and its limits:
    • Traditional view: remove the rotten apple (corrupt individual) to save the barrel. The text argues that corruption often reflects broader culture and systemic factors, not just a single individual.
  • Natural experiment on culture and corruption:
    • Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel studied parking offenses by UN diplomats (≈1,700 diplomats from 146 countries) in New York from 1997–2002, a period when diplomats enjoyed immunity from parking fines.
    • They used Transparency International’s corruption index to gauge the country of origin as a culture proxy.
    • Findings: Diplomats from more corrupt countries committed far more parking offenses per diplomat (e.g., Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan ranked high), whereas diplomats from relatively less corrupt countries (e.g., Sweden, Denmark) committed virtually none.
    • The results suggest that national culture and systemic incentives influence individual behavior in a given environment.
  • Experimental cross-national findings:
    • Abigail Barr and Danila Serra conducted vignette experiments with 285 participants from 43 countries and found that bribe willingness correlates with country corruption rankings; higher corruption in a country correlates with greater willingness to offer or accept bribes.
  • Conceptual takeaway:
    • Corruption is not solely the result of rotten individuals; it is shaped by the barrel (organizational culture) and the orchard (broader ecosystem).
    • Corruption can be ingrained in the environment; the organizational climate and social norms influence the likelihood of corruption among employees.
  • Implications for management:
    • Efforts to curb corruption should address the environment and systemic norms, not only identify and remove bad apples.
    • Cultivating a high-quality organizational culture and ethical climate helps prevent the spread of corrupt behavior.
  • Metaphor elaboration:
    • The barrel and orchard metaphor emphasizes that neighbors, sector norms, and industry conditions can perpetuate corruption if left unchecked.

Page 35: 9. Flyers and norms: cognitive stimuli

  • Focus: Clarity of norms and organizational guidelines as a first factor affecting ethical behavior.
  • The chapter previews a framework of eight chapters that follow, structured around seven environmental factors influencing behavior:
    • Chapter 9: Clarity of norms
    • Chapter 10: Affinity with norms
    • Chapter 11: How norms are named or framed
    • Chapter 12: Norms going over the top
    • Chapter 13: Norms that incite the opposite behavior
    • Chapter 14: Norms in behavior
    • Chapter 15: Norms in the environment (design)
    • Chapter 16: Inferring norms and values from the state of the office and its effect on others
  • Central idea:
    • Norms and their perceived legitimacy guide behavior. When norms are unclear or misaligned, people rely on personal heuristics, which can lead to ethical lapses.
  • Practical implication for leaders:
    • Establish clear norms and ensure alignment between stated values and everyday practices.
    • Be mindful that norms can backfire if they inadvertently reward unethical behavior or fail to sanction misconduct.
  • Preview of next steps:
    • The book will explore how knowledge and affinity for norms affect behavior (Chapter 9 and 10), how language and labeling of norms influence actions (Chapter 11), and how environmental design and office state relate to behavior (Chapters 12–16).

Notes

  • Throughout these pages, the central thread is that integrity and unethical behavior arise from a mix of innate dispositions, situational temptations, perceptions of self and others, and the surrounding environment. The author repeatedly emphasizes that:
    • People have a price, but that price is context-dependent and can be influenced by incentives, environment, and expectations.
    • Small acts of dishonesty accumulate and can erode organizational culture if not checked.
    • Altruism exists, but self-interest and internal rewards often accompany prosocial behavior.
    • Expectations (positive or negative) shape performance and ethics via self-fulfilling prophecies.
    • Self-image (Galatea) and self-knowledge biases (dodo effect) can dramatically influence ethical decision-making and teamwork.
    • Culture, environment, and systemic factors (barrel, orchard) explain much of observed unethical behavior, not just individual dispositions.

Key LaTeX references for numbers and percentages used in this section:

  • Individual and study statistics:
    • Three-year-olds who looked: 38\%
    • Three-year-olds who did not look and lied about it: \frac{1}{2} of those who looked? (text notes “half of the children”) -> \frac{1}{2} in proportion
    • Five-year-olds who looked but denied: \frac{2}{3}
    • Bagel takings in old department: 95\%; in Feldman’s professional operation: 91\%; long-run: 87\%; post-9/11: +2\% recovery
    • One money box stolen per year (approx.)
    • General petty misconduct figures: 21\% witnessed expense overclaims; 18\% theft; 15\% unauthorized business gifts
    • Self-assessment bias: 87\% self-rated above average; 83\% managers rated others above average; 3\% and 5\% lower bounds in respective samples
    • Unpacking effect reduction: from 139\% total to 121\% after unpacking contributions
    • Pygmalion effect home result: eight-month follow-up showing improved progress for “promising” students, with four causal mechanisms identified
    • Golem effect: reflected in negative reaction to unexpectedly good performance; negative spirals when expectations are low
    • Cheating priming study: percentage differences based on free will priming, with group primed for free will showing less cheating
  • These numerical references illustrate how the text grounds its qualitative claims about integrity, temptation, and organizational behavior in empirical findings.