As was the case with all of our other experiments, we found that people cheat when they have a chance to do so, but not by a whole lot.

I don’t know what exactly the translation is but when we do consume something now, something else has to give at some point.

Under the school’s disclosure rules, about 1,600 of 8,900 professors and lecturers at Harvard Medical School have reported to the dean that they or a family member had a financial interest in a business related to their teaching, research, or clinical care.”2 When professors publicly pass drug recommendations off as academic knowledge, we have a serious problem.

We are all very good at rationalizing our actions so that they are in line with our selfish motives.

It is helpful to think of people as having two fundamental motivations: the desire to see ourselves as honest, good people, and the desire to gain the benefits that come from cheating – on our taxes or on the football field.

As it turns out, we are caring social animals, but when the rules of the game involve money, this tendency is muted.

The people that lend you money basically give you an answer based on the risk that they are willing to take. But just because a bank is willing to take a particular risk doesn’t mean that that is the right amount for me to spend.

In a modern democracy, he said, people are beset not by a lack of opportunity, but by a dizzying abundance of it.

I do believe that an improved understanding of the multiple irrational forces that influence us could be a useful first step toward making better decisions.

By the time we comprehend and digest information, it is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Instead, it is our representation of reality, and this is the input we base our decisions on. In essence we are limited to the tools nature has given us, and the natural way in which we make decisions is limited by the quality and accuracy of these tools.