Sublime

the rule for reciprocation. It states that those who have given benefits to us are entitled to benefits from us in return. So valuable is it to the functional health of societies that all human cultures teach the rule from childhood and assign socially punishing names—freeloader, user, taker, parasite—to those who don’t give back after receiving.

Berns found that most people went along with the view of the majority, even if it was wrong.

Two University of Zurich researchers were equally curious: The Swiss nuclear incentive study, titled “The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out,” was conducted by Bruno S. Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee. It was published in the American Economic Review 87 (1997): 746–55. forty students sat with number 2 pencils:

Much of the time, more money can made by catering to human frailties than by helping people to avoid them.

These experiments with moral reminders suggest that our willingness and tendency to cheat could be diminished if we are given reminders of ethical standards.

the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency. Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. It is most powerful when least expected, like when things have gone wrong. Some

William Poundstone comments in Priceless: The Psychology of Hidden Value: