The Psychology of Cheating To some it was a fitting end to a pointless witch hunt. On Wednesday, after weeks of graphic testimony about steroid use, a jury in San Francisco cleared the former baseball slugger Barry Bonds of all charges but one, obstruction of justice. And even that might not hold up.
Why do fans excuse the Patriot’s cheating past? David DeSteno has a special vantage point for observing public response to the Patriots. He is a professor of psychology in Patriots country, at Northeastern University, in Boston, and he was a co-author of the study mentioned above. DeSteno is not a football fan, but he is an expert on the psychology of emotion, hypocrisy […]
Hire truth “Evolution didn’t shape us to be saints, it shaped us to be adaptable,” says David DeSteno, a psychology professor at Northeastern University. Any time we humans think we can get away with something, he says, the temptation to deceive increases. In “cheating experiments” conducted in 2007-08, DeSteno and collaborator Piercarlo Valdesolo found that 90 percent […]