This chapter went into detail about the different types of incentives, which are social, economic, and moral.
The economic incentive example that he used was with teachers, and it occurred in 1996. The incentive was a $25,000 bonus reward that was given to schools that do good on standardized testing. The economic incentive spiked the number of good performing schools, which turned out to be because of cheaters; mostly poor performing schools with younger less qualified teachers. Before implementing this bonus, one would have probably thought, what if there was cheating involved, but then again these are teacher's we are talking about. Well, teachers are humans too and when faced with a moral dilemma, they too can succumb to greed. I thought it was interesting how they used an algorithm to weed out the classrooms that really needed to retake the test, because of big fluctuations in there score. This resulted in the firing of teachers, and the next time the test was administered cheating fell 30%!
The sumo wrestler thing was a shock to me, because, like the Japanese, I thought that they had an enormous amount of discipline and respect in the sport, which would prevent cheating from ever happening. But, it made sense to me how stables would work out deals, so that the sumo with the bubble score 7-7, would be allowed to win. When there was a rematch between the two sumo's again, the majority of sumo's who had the bubble score could not win the rematch. When there is money and fame on the line, whether its moral or immoral, anything can happen.
The bagel story, which was based on the honor system, makes me think twice about the negative aspects of human nature. But then again, it was done in an area where people worked and had to be professional, so if he, lets say, had them setup outside a restaurant where anyone off the street could take one, then I believe there would be a lot more thefts involved. But I can see how it would work at a work place where there is a much better chance of theft staying at a minimum.
2 comments:
I agree with you in respect to being shocked after reading about teachers contributing to cheating. Throughout my life, every teacher I have had, has tried to instill perfect morals in each one of his/her students. However, as we read, these teachers were primarily in lower class neighborhoods. It goes to show you that there is some dichotemy in the "class" of teachers at a ritzy private school compared to an inner city public school. Id be curious to see the results from a nationwide comparison between the IQ's of public high school teachers and private high school teachers...
I bet the IQ's for public school teachers are probably lower than those from private schools. However, what makes the biggest difference is effort. I heard one of those, "I know a guy who knows a guy..." stories about a surgeon who had an IQ of 90. But, she was a great surgeon because she mastered her skills, learned how she learns best, and busted her ass to do what she wanted to do. So, the same could be said for private school teachers; they could just be the ones who had the ambition to not settle for a public school, and that's why they got hired.
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