Hey awesome! I saw his talk on TED!

One thing that interests me is the idea of how closely people equate things w/ $$$.

I doubt people would treat commodities such as food etc. on the same scale… then what about mp3 players etc…

And then comes stocks/bonds/etc.

If bankers are more or less forced to increase the disconnection between investments and $$$ would it translate more easily in the experiment?

[Reply]

I think the Coke vs. dollar bill experiment showed a serious disconnect between an object (like Coke) and money. Like it’s somehow OK to steal a Coke but not to steal a dollar bill. Therefore, they don’t equate the Coke with money or they some how think it’s not OK to steal money, but a single Coke is acceptable. Theft is theft I would say and I’ve been tempted several times to steal a soda from the community kitchen.

Another variable could have been the quantity of Cokes available to steal. Would someone steal the guy’s last Coke? I had a roommate back in college where he would drink most of my beer, but would always leave me the last one.

I don’t understand your last question. Can you rephrase?

[Reply]

Yeap, I’ll take “free” food and soda all the time (just that it might not necessarily be for me) … SO BAD =)

I mean realistically it sounds to me that it’s the disconnect between something someone values and an object.
Logically it would only make sense to take something if the gain I pick up is greater than the loss the other guy feels. (Now I’m drawing on Mill? or Kant? or phil heh)

Continued Points:
1. Do people in the “business” (for example a coke salesman) be more or less inclined to take/steal cokes?
2. I know what you mean about the “last one”, but if you accept my earlier argument about value then the “last one” just has greater value for the person who loses it but the same value for the person who takes it =)
3. I believe they only did the Q&A test for bankers; if they did the coke test would the same results/numbers occur?
3b. This is basically my last question (from before). Do bankers just have a greater disconnect of $ having value? So that they would be just as likely to steal cokes?
4. For the above experiment, does social economic class matter? Do richer people cheat more? Less?
5. I mean, basically would it make sense that bankers just have a greater mental disconnect between money and “value”? Either from
a. Making more money so 10 bucks to them is 10 cents to them
b. Being soooo directly involved in financial affairs, I mean their job is literally “making money”

Lots of unrelated points =)

Also, one more. I read your posts on a day as a trader; pretty “interestingly boring” =)! Tho I wonder why the lack of link here =P

[Reply]

I think the big thing was that an object (like a Coke) wasn’t immediately assigned a monetary value or was not considered “as bad as” stealing a dollar. One of the things I found so interesting about the study was the ability to say “it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as” in the mind of the person stealing the Coke.

Theft is theft, but it all depends on how you rationalize it. If you’re a billionaire, stealing $100 probably doesn’t mean that much. But if you’re a poor college kid, that $100 means a lot more.

So relating it to the bankers, they can rationalize that backdating their stock options or using the corporate jet for personal use isn’t as bad as shaving 0.1% off someone’s account (which they don’t ordinarily do).

It’s basically a system of getting away with as much as you can… and hopefully without getting caught.

[Reply]

Well another question would be maybe the coke is undervalued vs. a dollar? I bet if he lowered the currency more would disappear. The other issue is how does he guarantee that people know they are stealing cokes, i.e. it’s not someone generous?

Having the continuous scale, i.e. regions of gray is what makes us.. adults? It’s just that we still draw the (shifting) line on what we are willing to do… Now I wonder how kids would score (after being taught stealing is wrong =) )

Also, I think it depends on who you are stealing from! I would feel slightly better stealing from a nameless organization as opposed to that bum on the street. (This goes back to the “last coke” idea; I’d rather take cokes from some guy who had 100 vs. someone w/ just 1 coke)

But rmbr tho, backdating stock options is like stealing cokes vs. stealing dollars.
Also they are stealing cokes from someone with a lot of cokes vs. stealing dollars from someone with a lot less.

Regardless, pretty interesting experiment; His book is on my massively long to-read book =)

[Reply]