Thursday, December 26, 2013

Cheating Creates Emotional Boosts

According to a new study called:



The aforementioned article was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And it suggests that when people cheat (and it hurts nobody), people actually feel good.

Many of the participants, before they actually took part in this experiment, said that they would feel badly if they cheated. But, it turned out that the majority felt the direct opposite of bad.

The way they came to this conclusion, is they gave participants word-unscrambling tests. For every correct answer, they would get one dollar. After they finished, they were given an answer key to check their answers and report the number of correct answers they had.



The thing is, participants didn't realize that if they corrected their wrong answers, the researchers would know. And, unsurprisingly, 41% of them did.

Additionally, the follow-up assessment showed that on average, the cheaters felt an emotional boost that the honest participants did not.

Alternatively, taking the money out of the situation...



...participants were told that if they saw a pop-up message that said they got the wrong answer and offered the correct answer, they should ignore it, and continue working. Consequently, with no monetary incentive (really just ego), 68% of the people cheated at least once, clicking the button for a correct answer.

Also, in the follow-up assessment, just like the group previously, they had upbeat emotions.

After these studies, the researchers said they were a little appalled at these results.

Proportionally, there is some truth to the saying that when you cheat, the only person you're really cheating, is yourself. So, if you're in school right now, and you cheat your way through tests, you're just screwing yourself (up) for the future.



On the other hand, regardless of how terrible it sounds, lying is very human. It's one of the first things children pick up. Granted, they suck at it.



It could be also argued that it might make sense (or not) to say that lying is a tool to life-hack. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way saying lie to and cheat on everyone. No way! Don't get that idea. I don't do lies, and I can't stand liars either. I'm just using those thoughts to try and excavate explanations on why the loudest liars have (or at least tend to have) joy and the sense of survival by lying.

Quite frankly, by lying, you manipulate perception, thus defeating reality. With all of that typed, if these studies are in fact true, lying is still (and always will be) one of the things I don't recommend doing. There's no substitute for the truth; either it is, or it isn't.

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