
Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior - pavornyoh
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/25/1515102113
======
dmichulke
Applied to democracy, this means that politicians are more dishonest once
voted into office.

Maybe there is a reason why the ancient Greeks drew their leaders randomly
from their population

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy)

~~~
loup-vaillant
Nitpick:

Applied to democracy, this means that politicians who are voted into office
are more dishonest than all the others who aren't.

Being voted into office doesn't cause dishonesty. It's the reverse: dishonesty
helps with being voted into office.

~~~
lovemenot
You may have made a valid observation about causes of dishonesty in politics.
But that conclusion does not follow from the study. In the study dishonest
behaviour is shown to be an _effect_ of winning. Not a cause of winning.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Oh, _that 's_ new.

Reading the abstract more carefully, I can see that. But then, why does the
title says "predict" instead of "causes"?

------
raymondh
It would be interesting to do a parallel study so with the follow-up game
being more winnable by extra effort instead of by cheating.

My hypotheses is that winning begets a desire to continue winning -- if the
only way to win is cheating, the winners are more likely to cheat; however, if
the only way to win is to try harder, perhaps winners would do that too.

That would be an interesting outcome because it would suggest a model where
the likelihood of cheating by winners is primarily governed by whether the
only way to win is to cheat (i.e. the dice game used in the study)

------
davidovitch
ars technica reviewed the article a couple of days ago:
[http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/winners-act-as-
thick-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/winners-act-as-thick-as-
thieves/)

------
6stringmerc
Wow, this is really relevant to some experiences I've dealt with, in watching
contests that seemingly could only (most easily?) be "won" through dishonest
means. I'm specifically thinking about "music contests" where an initial
threshold is basically a view-count. Could using dishonest means have down-the
line effects on a band or music act?

Here's some sample text from the Vince Gill contest being put on by Guitar
Center:

> _ROUND ONE:During the Contest Period, the Contest platform will track each
> Submission’s popularity using a proprietary ranking algorithm ( "online
> activity"). Online activity tracking will be measured weekly throughout the
> Contest Period. Each week during the Contest Period, the Contest platform
> will identify the ten (10) Entrants with the highest online activity during
> that week (the "Top Ten Weekly" and the "Weekly Ranking" respectively). Each
> Entrant who’s Submission (i) is in the Top Ten Weekly (in the highest Weekly
> Ranking) as determined by Administrator and (ii) also meets the Submission
> Requirements is guaranteed to have at least one (1) Submission be reviewed
> by the Judging Panel in the Finalist Round. In the event that an Entrant has
> a Top Ten Weekly ranking in the Weekly Ranking on more than one occasion,
> the Judging Panel shall also review the next highest ranked Entrant so that
> there are a total of one hundred (100) Entrants that are guaranteed to have
> their Backing Track video in their Submission be reviewed by the Judging
> Panel in the Finalist Round, additional Submission videos, may or may not be
> reviewed. Any attempt by a Designated Agent or an Entrant and/or his or her
> family/friends to use fraudulent mechanisms to unfairly affect the outcome,
> as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion, shall give Sponsor the
> right to disqualify the Entrant. Entrants will not be notified if they are
> being judged in the Finalist Round._

I participated in a similar contest earlier using the same platform (Zedd if
you're at all curious). There was rampant click fraud being done by numerous
contestants, most of it simple click-for-click type stuff, but there were
obvious attempts to get way ahead.

Considering how frequently I come across "services" that guarantee
listens/likes/clicks through different platforms (Twitter, SoundCloud,
DatPiff, YouTube, etc) I'm highly skeptical of how well such contests are
policed.

In returning to the OP article, if dishonest means were the method to winning,
and it follows that dishonesty will rise again, I wonder how that plays out in
the music environment.

------
linhchi
The thing is how long does that effect last?

Maybe the winning triggers a bit of feel-good hormone so that the participant
finds himself in a situation of enjoying a little bit risk.

There are many behavioral experiments these days. And they'd like to produce
"common sense" results.

These results can't be generalised and i think it'd be even amoral to use it
to justify hating people. Like, seriously, ethical doings are not that clearly
defined anymore. The world has changed so much.

------
jcl
The paper isn't explicit about it, but I'm guessing "...among Ivy League
college students" is an implicit part of the title.

Drawing from a population that has spent most of their lives competing and
winning may skew the results somewhat, relative to other populations...

------
Frenchgeek
So... I must be the most honest man in the world.

~~~
mserdarsanli
So you won the honesty competition?

~~~
Frenchgeek
I ... refuse to answer that without my lawyer present.

------
brlewis
The study used individual competition. I wonder if they would observe the same
phenomenon with team competition.

------
micwawa
This says so much about the dangers of winner-take-all economics.

------
rurban
I smell bullshit when even the first sentence of the abstract is not
convincing. But it's not really bullshit, it's only common sense.

> "Competition is prevalent. People often resort to unethical means to win
> (e.g., the recent Volkswagen scandal)."

The recent "Volkswagen scandal", where the authors probably mean the recent
Bosch/Audi scandal who got caught cheating the diesel emission tests, had
nothing to do with competition. When everyone is cheating these tests since
centuries (starting with the US companies in the 90ies, and then the other car
makers later), it is a purely political problem, but has nothing to do with
competition. All the engines are using the cheating device, everybody cheats,
there's no competition, the game is rigged.

So when everyone cheats, just as also in competitive cycling, swimming,
athletics, or in politics, it's more a scenario how to play the game properly
and just avoid getting caught.

But here we went full-cycle, and declare favorable dishonest behavior based on
an environment where everyone cheats. The problem is not the winner as
declared in this paper, the problem is the whole game, at least the cabal of
the top 10 who mostly conspire to keep quiet. But in reality not only the
players of the game, also the whole training staff, the media, the judges, the
federation.

The rest of the paper wants to disprove the false image of the "good sport",
which is sometimes based on unfairness. And the new finding is that winning a
competition will favor dishonesty, and not only the other way round. Which
explains "corruption".

~~~
daveguy
1) Just because everyone is cheating doesn't mean there isn't a competition.
The competition is for clean, high-mileage, high-performing vehicles and it
very much is a competition.

2) I'm not sure why you decided to rename it a Bosch/Audi scandal as it is a
Volkswagen/Bosch/Audi/Porsche scandal. Volkswagen is simply the combination of
most highly distributed manufacturer and highest name recognition in that set.

3) Everyone cheats is not an excuse for cheating. It just means better testing
and regulation enforcement is required.

4) I do agree that the paper has it backwards. Dishonesty leads to Competition
"Winning" rather than the other way around.

