Pharmaceutical Industry Golfers Are The Biggest Cheats

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely got a golf company to send out e-mails surveys to their users. 17,000 people to responded. On Marketplace yesterday he discussed his findings:

First of all, it turns out that people in the pharmaceutical industry cheated a lot, but they also said their industry is the most honest that there is. There are some other interesting comparisons. For example, if you look at law enforcement, education and government, people in those three industries basically cheat on average, as do people in sales, marketing, advertising and so on. But the people in law enforcement, education and government think that they’re the most honest, while the people in sales and marketing and advertising cheat just the same but they think they come from industries that are much less honest.

So who really is the most honest?

Well, the most honest quite surprisingly were the people from the insurance industry… Could you believe it? Yeah, they cheated…it turns that they thought they were not particularly honest as an industry, but in our sample they cheated the least.

RELATED: Back in February Ariely talked to Wired about why we cheat.