* The flood of corporate scandals that continued from that point on very clearly answered this question.

  * For the full references to all the materials used in each chapter, and for related readings, see the Bibliography and Additional Readings at the back of the book.

  * Beyond exploring the topic of dishonesty, this book is fundamentally about rationality and irrationality. And although dishonesty is fascinating and important in human endeavors its own right, it is also important to keep in mind that it is but a single component of our interesting and intricate human nature.

  * Readers of Predictably Irrational might recognize some of the material presented in this chapter and in chapter 2, “Fun with the Fudge Factor.”

  * X stands for the number of questions that the participants claimed to have solved correctly.

  * One important question about the usage of moral reminders is whether over time people will get used to signing such honor codes, causing such reminders to lose their effectiveness. That is why I think that the right approach is to ask people to write their own version of the honor code—that way it will be difficult to sign without thinking about morality, and more ethical behavior should follow.

  * As it turned out, I was audited by the IRS a few years later, and it was a long, painful but very interesting experience. I don’t think it was related to this meeting.

  * I suspect that for people who actively dislike the government or insurance companies, the effect would still hold, though it might be mitigated to some degree—something worth testing in the future.

  * Think about all the cases in which people ask for advice about how to behave in embarrassing situations—not for themselves but for a “friend.”

* When I was a teenager, a magnesium flare exploded next to me. I suffered massive third-degree burns and underwent many operations and treatments over the subsequent years. For more details, see my previous books.

* Perhaps the most telling evidence for the pharma industry’s influence is the fact that my insider for this interview insisted that I keep his name confidential to avoid being blacklisted by pharma.

* This was the first time that I was paid a lot by the hour, and I was intrigued by how I started to view many decisions in terms of “work hours.” I figured that for one hour of work I could buy a really fancy dinner and that for a few more I could buy a new bicycle. I suspect that this is an interesting way to think about what we should and should not purchase, and one day I might look into this.

* The market for fake goods, of course, ranges far beyond Chinatown and New York. After gathering momentum for more than forty years, the phenomenon is now a formidable affair. Counterfeiting is illegal almost everywhere on our planet, though the severity of the punishment varies from country to country, as does people’s view of the morality of buying counterfeits. (See Frederick Balfour, “Fakes!” BusinessWeek, February 7, 2005.)

* The rumor about this shipment quickly traveled around Duke, and I became popular among the fashion-minded crowd.

* You might wonder if receiving counterfeits as gifts would have the same effect as choosing a counterfeit product for ourselves. We wondered the same thing and tested this question in another experiment. It turned out that it doesn’t matter whether we acquire a counterfeit product by our own choice or not; once we have a fake product, we are more likely to cheat.

* You might wonder if people are aware of the downstream consequences of counterfeits. We tested this too and found that they are unaware of these effects.

* We used this type of SAT-like question instead of our standard matrices because we expected that such questions would lead more naturally to the feeling of “I knew it all along” and to self-deception.

* The story was written up by Kubrick’s assistant, Anthony Frewin, in Stop Smiling magazine, and it was the basis of the film Colour Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich as Conway.

* I have nothing against the Ford Taurus, which I am sure is a fine automobile; it just wasn’t as exciting a car as I’d imagined myself driving.

* I suspect that there is a connection between dishonesty and traveling in general. Perhaps it’s because when traveling the rules are less clear, or maybe it has to do with being away from one’s usual setting.

* The smart thing would have been to lead the students through the oath at the start of every lecture, and maybe this is what I will do next time.

* I suspect that companies that adapt the ideology of maximizing shareholder value above all else can use this motto to justify a broad range of misbehaviors, from financial to legal to environmental cheating. The fact that the compensation of the executives is linked to the stock price probably only increases their commitment to “shareholder value.”

* Another fuzzy rule is the quaint-sounding “principle of prudence,” according to which accountants should not make things appear rosier than they actually are.

* Based on these results, we could speculate that people who work for ideological organizations such as political groups and not-for-profits might actually feel more comfortable bending moral rules—because they are doing it for a good cause and to help others.

* Are dentists doing this on purpose, and do the patients know that they are being punished for their loyalty? Most likely it is not intentional, but whether conscious or not, the problem remains.