Bagel theft may not seem to be a controversial topic, and it pales in comparison to more controversial topics such as cheating teachers, and the unforeseen benefit that legalizing abortions had, but there are deeper things that can be discovered about human nature, morality, and honesty from something so simple as paying for a bagel that you take from a break room.
We all like to think that we are good and honest people, but when we are given the chance to do we sometimes cut corners, or do dishonest things when the situation is considered trivial or others might not notice our actions?
The author discusses this because something like not paying for a bagel is a crime that usually goes unnoticed, because it's not the type of thing we think of when we think of crime like burglary or murder. It's one of those unrecorded middle class crimes in the daily life of the working man.
This is presented by the story of Paul Feldman the "Bagel Guy", who started the business of leaving bagels in offices with a box with a suggested price on it. He collected data on what his collection rate was, and with that data he was able to see many trends on how different aspects of life correlated with bagel collection money.
He saw how their moods could effect their generosity and honesty in giving money to the bagel guy. The stress of holidays such as Christmas caused some people to pay less or not at all for their bagels.
There's also morals to the bagels since Paul isn't there when the bagels are taken or when the money is put in the basket, so people may see this as a way around their morals since they can't actually see the face of the person that they are cheating out of money, and there is no way for him to find out exactly who took a bagel without paying. And since bagels are relatively cheap the cheater may see this as just a trivial thing, and not worth the guilt that would be reserved for bigger offenses.
A similar thing was done at a church that I attend where after mass there would be baskets of donuts with a donation box beside it. Even though the setup is very similar to the bagels, the situation is different as the people who are taking these donuts had just come from church, and morals after church are much more high than any other time.
Kim, when I read this section of Freakonomics I couldn't help but laugh. I thought it was a clever idea because who doesn't love bagels? I also found it interesting how Paul Feldman could draw all these conclusions about people just by how they payed for their bagels. He also noted on page 48 that smaller offices were more honest than bigger ones. I was surprised by this, I figured a bigger office would lead to more people being honest because there are more people around to catch them. I have to wonder, does peer pressure play a role in this? Maybe with bigger offices people feel pressured into paying the same as everyone else or none at all. Whereas a smaller office with less people around to judge, you could pay whatever you felt comfortable with.
ReplyDeleteKim, much like Sarah this part of the book I found very entertaining. At the church I attend, there is a bin of cookies with a donation box next to it. I suppose I'm a cookie thief because I didn't realize it was required to donate in order to eat one...oops. When the studies showed that smaller businesses were more generous I completely agreed. When this was mentioned, all i could think of were all the stereotypes given to large corporations with the mean, busy, rich CEO, snobby workers, greedy people...whereas the underdog (smaller businesses) are stereotypically friendlier. Or one could look at it as smaller businesses have less people to steal from him. I found this section to be very interesting and one can't pin point the motive of the human brain.
ReplyDeleteMuch like Christina and Sarah, I found this part of the book interesting. As was mentioned it was not necessarily as large a scale topic like the effects of abortion and crime which almost made it stand out to me. I too was curious about why the smaller businesses were less likely to steal from Paul. My first thought was that since they were a small business they could relate to Paul, as his business was small as well. Whereas the larger businesses would not be able to relate to him.
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