This may explain a lot...when success is defined by winning, dishonesty increases.

[HereSince1628]

Remember how winning is everything for some politicians?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160203134850.htm

Winning a competition predicts future dishonest behavior, say researchers

<snip>

"We already know that some politicians and business executives will often resort to unethical means to win, for example the recent Volkswagen scandal," explains Dr. Amos Schurr, a lecturer in BGU's Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management and member of the University's Decision Making and Economic Psychology Center. "Our research was focused on who is more likely to subsequently engage in unrelated unethical behaviors -- winners or losers?"

The researchers found that after a competition is over, winners behave more dishonestly than losers in an unrelated subsequent task. Furthermore, the subsequent unethical behavior effect seems to depend on winning, rather than on mere success.

The research group conducted five studies with students in Israel. The first two studies demonstrated that winning a competition increases the likelihood of winners to steal money from their counterparts in a subsequent unrelated task. Studies 3a and 3b demonstrated that the effect holds only when winning means performing better than others, but not when success is determined by chance or in reference to a personal goal.

The last study, a post-competition survey, suggested that winners felt a sense of entitlement after besting their opponents in the initial competition, which the researchers say explains why they were more likely to cheat in the second contest. The subsequent unethical behavior effect seems to depend on winning, rather than on mere success.

"These findings suggest that the way in which people measure success affects their honesty. When success is measured by social comparison, as is the case when winning a competition, dishonesty increases," Schurr explains. "When success does not involve social comparison, as is the case when meeting a set goal, defined standard or recalling a personal achievement, dishonesty decreases."

Snip

[merrily]

1. Thanks. Incentive to re-offend is the reason we don't look only forward.

However, as always, some people are more entitled equal than others.

[HereSince1628]

2. Makes you wonder why cheaters are referred to as losers. n/t

[merrily]

3. No one knows you cheat, unless you get caught.

So, only cheaters who get caught are referred to as losers, or even just as cheaters.

And, if you get caught and don't get punished, you may even be perceived as a winner.

I guess my cynical side is responding to your post. I'll make her shut up now.

[HereSince1628]

4. Good point. n/t

[merrily]

7. .

[Rex]

5. Well that explains what has happened to Wall Street.

When you never lose, because the game is rigged...imagine how dishonest one would get?

[GoneFishin]

6. Makes me wonder about people who are born on 3rd base but brought up to believe they hit a home run.

[HereSince1628]

8. One of the leveraging factors appears to be social vs personal success

If success is meeting a personal goal dishonesty goes down, if success is about a goal in relationship to others cheating goes up.

This is probably a measure of my lack of imagination, but I can't get my head around how a person's birth on 3rd base would be anything but tremendously lucky.

Nonetheless, I do see how growing up on 3rd base might lead to a sense of entitlement and make accepting lesser life outcomes more difficult to accept, re embarrassment, sense of failure etc. Perhaps that's part of the pathology of 'affluenza'.

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. Cheaters DO prosper.

The corrollary is that the prosperous are mostly cheaters.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success. Lord Acton