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  3. Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. That is one of the themes in Dan Ariely’s new book "The(Honest)Truth About D

Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. That is one of the themes in Dan Ariely’s new book "The(Honest)Truth About D

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问题     Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. That is one of the themes in Dan Ariely’s new book "The(Honest)Truth About Dishonesty". Most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that "good person" identity.
    Ariely, who is one of the most creative social scientists on the planet, had one blind colleague and one sighted colleague take taxi rides. The drivers cheated the sighted colleague by taking long routes much more often than they cheated the blind one, even though she would have been easier to mislead. They would have felt guilty cheating a blind woman. Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer — part of a daily battle against evil.
    But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: the Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal and a generally good guy.
    Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind passenger because I’m a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.
    The key job in the Good Person Construct is to manage your rationalizations and self-deceptions to keep them from getting conspicuous. Ariely suggests you reset your moral gauge from time to time. Your moral standards will gradually slip as you become more and more comfortable with your own rationalizations.
    I’d add that you really shouldn’t shoot for goodness, which is so vague and forgiving. You should shoot for rectitude. We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards. And as we go about doing our Good Person moral calculations, it might be worth asking: Is this good enough?
To which of the following statement would Ariely agree?
选项 A、A bit of deception invites no harm
B、We are unlikely to be truly honest
C、We are driven by economic models
D、People tend to cling to moral codes
答案B
解析 文章开篇指出艾瑞里新书的一个论题：几乎人人都欺骗，但通常只是那么一点点I我们大都认为，偶尔的小欺骗不会妨碍我们做个好人。可见，[B]选项符合文意。
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