The Honest Truth About Dishonesty

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely

On the library shelves: Adult Non-fiction
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I became a fan of Dan Ariely when I read Predictably Irrational three years ago.  He is a behavioral economist, now at Duke, with a great business sense. In this book, he looks at dishonesty and how it affects ourselves, our communities and our workplaces.

Dan structures the book by discussing some experiments he has conducted and what they have demonstrated about how we make choices. Essentially, we don't choose to be dishonest based on a simple cost/benefit analysis. Instead, there are a number of factors that influence our decision to be honest including religious reminders, what others around us are choosing and how much we feel we can get away with that is "reasonable." After each discussion he gives an real-world example and then gives some ideas about how we can structure our lives to be more honest individuals.

My book club read this one in November. It is incredibly readable and makes for a great discussion. We loved discussing Ariely's various experiments and each of us had some interesting take-aways.

Source: Library