BBC News Magazine asks “Why do well-off people shoplift?” following TV-chef Anthony Worrall Thompson’s arrest over the weekend. Interviewing psychologists, the article suggests depression, the recession, or trauma as potential reasons.
A 2008 paper by Dan Ariely provides another possible explanation.
First, it is not immediately clear why theft is irrational. People may shoplift because an assessment of the relative benefits and costs, which may take into account the likely punishment, and the probability of being caught, suggests there is more to gain than lose. Recent trends in items stolen during burglaries provide some evidence that burglars may be rational economic agents (just not moral ones).
Most people internalise societal norms and use these norms as a benchmark against which to judge their behaviour. In general, we’re typically averse to negatively updating our own self-image. What stops most people from following through with an otherwise rational act is a desire to preserve their self-image as an honest person – i.e. how we might be perceived as a consequence of certain actions becomes a relevant cost.
Yet, as Worrall Thompson proves, otherwise honest people still thieve.
Ariely explains this with the ‘theory of self-concept maintenance’. Ariely argues that there is a ‘magnitude-range’ of dishonesty which allows people to resolve the internal dilemma between a rational act (in this case thieving) and the impact of that act on one’s own self-image. Put simply, we’re more inclined to commit small acts of dishonesty as these don’t usually impact negatively on our self-image.
What Ariely terms ‘categorisation malleability’ also matters – we’re more likely to steal a pencil worth 50p from a friend than steal 50p from their wallet to buy a pencil. Similarly, Worrall Thompson is (arguably) more likely to steal cheese and wine than stuff his hand in the till and take money to the equivalent amount.
How can we reduce the likelihood of low-level dishonesty, such as Worrall Thompson’s?
In Ariely’s experiments, forcing students to recite as many of the Ten Commandments as they could remember prior to an exam had a statistically significant impact on the level of cheating compared to a control group.
So reminding people about their moral code is sufficient to nudge them into better behaviour. The antidote to the Worrall Thompsons of the world may be to amend self-service machine announcements so they recite the Ten Commandments, rather than telling you repeatedly that there is “an unexpected item in the bagging area”.
Perhaps a more interesting conclusion from Ariely’s work is that we should be neither surprised nor scathing about Worrall Thompson’s behaviour on the basis that (a) it is, economically speaking, rational and (b) we’ve probably done similarly dishonest things before too, but perhaps we’re just better at not being caught.*
*Of course, I’m not in any way condoning theft. Nor should this be construed as an admission of guilt.