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  • The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty

  • How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
  • By: Dan Ariely
  • Narrated by: Simon Jones
  • Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (161 ratings)
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The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty

By: Dan Ariely
Narrated by: Simon Jones
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Summary

Fascinating and provocative, Dan Ariely’s The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty is an insightful and brilliantly researched take on cheating, deception, and willpower. The internationally best-selling author pulls no punches when it comes to home truths. His previous titles Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality have become classics in their field, revealing unexpected and astonishing traits that run through modern humankind.

Now acclaimed behavioural economist Dan Ariely delves deeper into the dark and murky recesses of contemporary psychology, daring to ask the big questions:

  • What makes us cheat?
  • How and why do we rationalise deception of ourselves and other people, and make ourselves ‘wishfully blind’ to the blindingly obvious?
  • What affects our infuriatingly intangible willpower and how can we ‘catch’ the cheating bug from other bad apples?

If you’ve ever wondered how a whole company can turn a blind eye to evident misdemeanours within their ranks, whether people are born dishonest, and whether you can really be successful by being totally, brutally honest, then this audiobook is for you.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2012 HarperCollins Publishers Limited (P)2012 Dan Ariely

What listeners say about The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty

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Lively and fun

Dishonesty and cheating is quite a difficult issue to write about, but Dan Ariely has a light-handed, breezy approach which works very well. Much of the news is rather depressing - most people cheat some of the time, our doctors, dentists and bankers exploit us to their advantage, children are born with the natural inclination to deceive and we all mislead ourselves to our own advantage. On the bright side, most people are constrained by a broader moral code - you should only cheat a bit, you should not cheat blind people, you might also lie or cheat to achieve a greater 'overall fairness' in the world.

A lot of the results presented come from experiments on US undergraduates, so research-wise you might question the wider validity and implications. I found the questions raised interesting and most of the results intuitively satisfying. The book ends with a series of interviews/conversations with Ariely's colleagues. These do not add much to the content (they repeat results already presented) but it is interesting to hear Ariely, on the hoof, talking through the possible interpretations, misinterpretations and complications in the results. It shows how careful you have to be in experimental design, and in drawing any firm conclusions. The academic mind at work, you might say.

Narration. Mr Ariely (who speaks English with a strong Isreali accent) stumps up the fee for a professional narrator and I salute that decision. The narrator is a bit sing-song/Jackanory, but this is sometimes welcome as an antidote to the sensitive nature of many of the findings - i.e. a humorous tone helps when we are discussing how 'we are all a bit naughty, aren't we?'

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8 people found this helpful

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It's yourself you have to fool!

MPs dishonestly claiming expense, banks lying to manipulate the LIBOR irate, price fixing by oil companies... Lying, cheating and dishonesty are all around us! Indeed Ariely's research shows that most of us are just a little bit dishonest, it seems. That's perhaps no surprise. The surprise factor for me, is that the bigger the amount, the LESS likely we are to cheat. The limiting factor seems to be not how much we can get away with, but how much we challenge our self-image by an act of dishonesty - and how far we can justify it to ourselves. This book looks at the many ways we justify our cheating, and how far from the truth and into serious fraud such justifications can subtly take us by salami tactics. Many factors are investigated by Ariely in a series of experiments. How does cheating by others corrupt our own honesty? How much do we calculate the risk of getting caught? Would a pair of drawn cartoon eyes stop you taking unclaimed money off a table? Are highly creative people more likely to tell lies than less creative people? Like his other books, I found this quite an eye opener - into my own attitudes towards honesty, cheating and my own self justifications to preserve intact my own good self-image. If nothing else, I think I recognise my own mental tricks to fool myself more. Enjoyably read by Simon Jones - the narration is like a hitchhikers guide to dishonesty in the very pleasant company of Arthur Dent.

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Interesting, but rehashing all the tired examples

The subject matter of the book is quite interesting. However, judging from just the examples, it seems like not much research is performed in the field, since the same research results surface in every book on the subject.

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An Unfortunate Warning

I do not like that I have to write this review, but I feel that it is a necessity in light of recent events.

It has been recently revealed that the major studies that this book is based were found to have been faked.
most notably, the experiments where (1) signing the document before Vs after writing and (2) finding the correlation between honestly and creativity, were completed using falsified data, which was intentionally edited to create significant findings.

as a result, the contents of this book and the ideas it suggests should be called into question until further research is able to verify each of the claims put forward.

This review is in no way a condemnation of Dan Ariely or Simon Jones, both of whom I respect greatly, and on the whole this is an entertaining listen with plenty to think about, but as honesty and integrity lie at the heart of maintaining behavioural science as a respected field, I cannot recommend this book anymore.

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Good overall but ideas a little stretched

I enjoyed the book it really found it enlightening. The experiments seem to conclude ideas that I already suspected that lying is complicated and not a simple cost benefit analysis.
I found it strange how Dan was happy to put his interviews in the book that are himself, yet pay someone else to narrate a book on dishonesty. I'm not sure if this was intentional but it certainly surprised me.
Lying is something we all in fact do and this does explain and suggest some reasons as to why, but it doesn't really cross over too much into the realm of ethics or morality with the depth required. I did feel that the book went far too deep into exactly how people were tested and I would've preferred more discussion and philosophy on the morality of the results and possible conclusions.
l enjoyed it overall but felt it needed a little more work or an sequel with more analysis. I would definitely recommend it to any psychology fan or student.

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It's (honestly) great!

A fascinating study of human behaviour, that is also enjoyable for the humour with which Ariely delivers his insights: thoroughly accessible and well-narrated.

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    3 out of 5 stars

Rather repetitive

After about the third account of an almost-identical study I started to find this audiobook tedious - but I stayed with it till the end... whereupon there are rather a lot of interviews that don't seem to add a lot to the book.

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Incredible book

Amazing book, the information in here has changed the way I think. I have recommended to everyone I know. Simon Jones is such a charismatic narrator, he keeps it interesting and intriguing. This is one book I will continue to listen to. Can not recommend highly enough

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Amusing and interesting

Read with a smile. Interesting experiments revealing human nature, and how our environments influence us.

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Great addons

The one on one interviews at the end with the researchers whos studies he published added alot of value to the analysis presented in the title.

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