Why Stealing $10 of Pencils Doesn't Seem as Bad As Stealing $10
By Valerie Ross | June 26, 2012 10:16 am  Most of us would
consider ourselves honest people—but that doesn’t stop us from
fudging the rules in favor of our team, giving an inflated
report of our own performance, or buying knock-off accessories
rather than the legit version. At Wired, Joanna Pearlstein talks
to behavioral economist Dan Ariely about what leads us to lie,
cheat, and steal—and rationalize our behavior to ourselves as
not being so bad.  Wired: You write that people find it easier
to rationalize stealing when they’re taking things rather than
actual cash. You did an experiment where you left Coca-Colas in
a dorm refrigerator along with a pile of dollar bills. People
took the Cokes but left the cash. What’s going on there?   This,
I think, is one of the most worrisome experiments we’ve ever
conducted, and it’s again about rationalization. There’s a story
about a kid who gets in trouble at school for stealing a pencil
from another kid,