Why We Lie Summary

Anthony Bitegeko

9/26/16

Why We Lie Article

               Why We Lie by Dan Ariely is a great article about the psychology behind Why We Lie, and studies that they preformed. This article talked about dishonesty and how it runs through our society. They preformed studies that showed that "We have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats --- just a little bit" (Ariely 441). That quote summarizes this entire article, because with all the studies shown, that quote seemed to be the conclusion. Although in some studies, with the increase in money there was also a decrease in lying. The "Matrix task"(Ariely 441), which people must solve, and is quite challenging was used to study how much people will lie for money. When they rewarded 50 cents for every one they finished people lied more then when they rewarded $10 per test. This shows that there is a line that people will lie, but not so much that they feel bad on the inside. 

               Paragraph 10 is a fairly short paragraph but I will do my best to paraphrase. Paragraph 10 is basically saying that we all know everybody cheats, but it is just a matter of how much.

            My favorite quote from this passage comes from the second paragraph. The first anecdote really got me hooked onto this article, and what Locksmith said really made sense to me. "The purpose of locks, the locksmith said, is to protect you from 98% of mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door if it had no lock"(Ariely 440). This quote had me hooked on this subject, because lets be honest everybody lies, its just a matter of how honest you are. The 2% is the people who have no care in the world are the outliers, but the 98% represent the rest of society. They tested this theory a lot, and most studies actually shows that very few would take a lot of money from the matrix task.