‘Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is,’ said Pablo Escobar. But was he right? Picture the following scenario. You are taking part in an experiment where you roll a dice once, and report the result to the experimenter. If you report rolling a 6, you receive a certain amount of money. The experiment is set up so that nobody else can see what you rolled. So… what sum of money would it take for you to cheat?
(a) £1, (b) £5, (c) £10, (d) £50, (e) £150?
This study was recently carried out by the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany. The researchers were blind to the dice rolls, but able to infer cheating by participants’ responses (if someone reports six 6s in a row, the probability of this is 1 in 46,656). From the results, the researchers identified four personality types when it comes to honesty. But which are you?
If you said “no” throughout, then congratulations, you are incorruptible. If you said “yes”’ for all the amounts, then you are what the researchers called a “brazen liar”, prepared to cheat (albeit in this low-stakes scenario) for virtually any incentive at all.
If you said “no” for (a) and “yes” for (e), switching somewhere in between, then you try to be honest, but (as Pablo would have predicted) are corruptible if the price is right.
If you said “yes” for (a) but “no” for (e), switching somewhere in between, then you are a “small sinner”. You will cheat for a small payoff, but feel too guilty if you get too much in return.
So Pablo was partly right: most people do have a price. But for some people, a smaller price feels more permissible than a big one.
A fully referenced version of this article is available at benambridge.com. Order Psy-Q by Ben Ambridge (Profile Books, £8.99) for £6.99 at bookshop.theguardian.com
