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CEOs Who Cheat in Bedroom Will Cheat in Boardroom: Study
- jedberg 7y agoOr to put it another way: people who were dumb enough to use an app to cheat on their spouse were also dumb enough to get caught cheating in other aspects of their life. They got their data from the Ashley Maddison hack and then cross referenced that with police records of people who got caught. I'm not sure this is a very valid study.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoBut it could be fun to find similar signals with public data and use that to target those folks in their roles for further scrutiny. Insider risk management sort of thing, before it turns into securities fraud.
- jedberg 7y agoOh yeah that Ashley Madison hack is a gold mine for people who want to blackmail others. So if anything the take away from this should be to check and make sure that if any of your employees have important company data, see if they were in that hack.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 7y agoNot just Ashley Madison. Okcupid. Tinder. Grindr. That group sex site that was just mentioned on HN [1]. Any dating site that is laissez faire about their data and API access (ie all of them) is a trove of information for building a dataset of morally flexible individuals (when correlated against public records). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20650069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20650069
- aidos 7y agoTinder? I’ve never used it but it’s used by a lot of people I know for legitimate dating.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoTinder profile + public marriage record = possible hit. I know married folk who use Tinder (some ethically non-monogamous, some not so ethically), so some human review in your workflow would be required. From previous experience consuming public record data sources programmatically, a proof of concept would take no more than a full day of work. I am not suggesting one do this, only that pandora's box is already open.
- filoleg 7y agoNone of those other sites are even similar to Ashley Madison. There is nothing morally wrong with dating using apps or being gay. But I expect most people to agree that cheating is definitely not morally clear. In fact, the latter ones are so ubiquitous, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a person in a major US city in their 20s who was single for a period of time in the past 5 years and haven't used one of those apps.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThe apps alone are not the signal. The app data combined with other data sources is the signal. It can demonstrate intent.
- ambicapter 7y agoIntent to what? Date?
- hangonhn 7y agoIsn't that sort of the premise of China's social score/credit experiment?
- Bud 7y agoAlso the premise of a Black Mirror episode. And soon, it will the premise of everyday life in the US. Whoopee!
- inetknght 7y ago> * use that to target those folks in their roles for further scrutiny. Insider risk management sort of thing, before it turns into securities fraud.* Or said in one word: blackmail. There's no sugar coating it. You'd be collecting data points and analyzing them to pursue your own justice without due process. That's quite a dangerous thing to claim to want to do in the name of "insider risk management".
- toomuchtodo 7y agoHaving been responsible for standing up insider risk management protocols and systems in financial services, this usually occurs at high level executive/senior roles and it's part of your employment agreement that data will be collected and evaluated for the purpose (in a similar sense to an overzealous, continuous background check). I don't support blackmail in any form, full stop. I do want to know if you're going to embezzle millions of dollars before you do, as do shareholders or customers (if you're managing assets) of the organization.
- not_a_cop75 7y agoDumb enough. Just call it what it is - bad character. There is no person that is so intelligent that he/she can cheat for long and not eventually get caught. If people want to know the truth about a person badly enough, they will.
- ixtli 7y agoisn't this sorta like proving the absence of something? surely for all the people who got caught having two families, some never did! fwiw, i also don't think its a good measure of intelligence, i just think some people configure their lives in such a way where they're better able to get away with things.
- mc32 7y agoWhen I read about people like Nicholas Cage, I come to the conclusion the way people manage relationships is only very loosely tied to intelligence, if at all. Not saying he’s super smart or the opposite, but even Einstein had relationship issues.
- jedberg 7y ago> There is no person that is so intelligent that he/she can cheat for long and not eventually get caught. How do you know? Wouldn't the very best never get caught and therefore we'd never know? How do you explain all of the unsolved crimes?
- cheeky78 7y agoBecause we didn't have the technology and ability to lookup DNA as cheaply or easily 20+ years ago. I expect unsolved crime to continue to go down as our technology gets better.
- moate 7y agoBut that hasn't been the case. Here's a good example: https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-...
- notafraudster 7y agoThe study appears to have a valid design, subject to some questions not answered in the Bloomberg coverage. I think the more reasonable question is what exactly the design is measuring. Using the Ashley Madison data is basically what we would call a "reduced form estimate". The idea is that someone in the Ashley Madison data is more likely (or at least not less likely) than a comparable individual not in the Ashley Madison data to cheat on their spouse. They would like to measure whether or not people actually cheat, but they can't, so they measure this instead. This kind of reduced form estimate is a fairly common thing when you can't measure actual treatment compliance, but you can measure an "invitation to treat". We, in fact, know that Ashley Madison wasn't actually used for cheating because there were no (zero) real women on the site. Extensive analyses of the data leak suggest basically that men signed up and were faced with phony bots. But the idea should still be that the choice to sign up on Ashley Madison reveals an attempt to cheat. The other major challenge for the design is that the control group of CEOs need to have what we would think are baseline similar propensity to commit fraud etc in all respects except for the choice to cheat. So, at the very least I would want to do a matching, weighting, or propensity score design that accounts for differential company characteristics (sector, size, age, any characteristics we would a priori affect propensity to engage in financial malfeasance.) If what we learn is that people who run shady payday loan companies also cheat on their spouses, then this is maybe not interesting. But if what we learn is that among F2000 blue chip companies in similar sectors, cheating spouses are more likely to be cheating CEOs, this is more interesting, right? I agree with you that it's possible that the degree of difficulty / competence factor might be a confounder. Probably they could compensate for this by looking at something other that rate of conviction for malfeasance, rather by modelling types / degrees of malfeasance and degree of difficulty for getting caught. Finally, the casual inference here is impossible. So it's possible that they have a good design to answer a question they're not asking. I would assume the default assumption is not that cheating on one's spouse causes one to cheat on financial things, but rather that both are outcomes which flow from an underlying propensity for deceit. In this case, the main takeaway is that early indicators of deceit may allow us to head off or catch financial malfeasance. That's interesting, but maybe not the exact question they're asking. I'd be really interested in reading the final thing because I could see it going either way. I think it's an interesting proposal for a design. Would love to see a pre-print
- jeromebaek 7y agoYou sound like a cheater who hasn't been caught... yet. ;)
- ancorevard 7y agoThey studied character not intelligence. Cheating is not associated with low intelligence but with a corrupt character.
- yumraj 7y agoBasically morally/ethically compromised folks will cheat everywhere they can.
- dotdi 7y agoSo they found that people that exhibit lower ethical and/or moral standards behave with lower ethical or moral standards, which is hardly surprising but it's interesting to see the correlation show up in actual data.
- scarejunba 7y agoWell, we don’t know about the universality of that, right? Are cheaters more likely to rape? Are boardroom liars more likely to steal your wallet?
- kenforthewin 7y agoStudy Shows Grass is Green
- hsnewman 7y agoThis is a surprise?
- metalliqaz 7y agoIt seems to me that CEOs are often hired specifically for their ability to cheat and get away with it.
- bdcravens 7y agoConfirmation bias - media always reports on bad apples.
- jmpman 7y agoI remember a study conducted by the military to determine what characteristics predicted leadership. Ultimately it concluded that the ability to tell a believable lie had the best correlation. Extrapolate that fun fact as you wish.
- phkahler 7y agoYour comment forced me to think. People are all imperfect. People in competitive environments are unforgiving. That means covering your shortcoming or mistakes is important, and that's inherently deceptive.
- domnomnom 7y agoI wonder if it just has more to do with confidence. I don't think there are any good indicators of someone lying.
- 7y ago
- 5440 7y ago"Win if you can, Lose if you must, but always cheat." Jesse Ventura via Werner Herzog.
- inscionent 7y agoI heard they also cheat at golf
- wpietri 7y agoNot entirely surprising. "How you do anything is how you do everything." Or as Barbara Tuchman put it, "Character is fate."
- lefstathiou 7y ago“Character is destiny” - Heraclitus http://www.geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Ethos_Anthropos_Daimon.html http://www.geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Ethos_Anthrop...
- friendlybus 7y agoDestiny or fate are parts of the unconscious being played out without being named.
- jeanlucas 7y agoNice, remember when HBR said the shape of your earlobe can signal how good a leader you are?
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoThat's comparing a physical characteristic to a non-physical one. Not even apples to oranges, that's apples to communism. There are possibly some correlations between anatomy and personality characteristics, both those will be weaker. This is literally comparing ethics to ethics.
- burger_moon 7y agoSo where does Jeff Bezos fall in this?
- olivermarks 7y ago'Finance professors at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University ...examined four groups of users specifically -- a total of 11,000 brokers, corporate executives, white-collar criminals and police officers. Cross-checking against public records, they found that those Ashley Madison customers generally were more than twice as likely to have violated professional codes of conduct compared with a control group, according to authors John Griffin, Samuel Kruger and Gonzalo Maturana.' How did they extrapolate CEO's as cheats from this? CEO's have ample time, money and excuses to arrange affairs without resorting to dating apps. They are probably the most attractive people to have an affair with for many people...
- hank_z 7y agolol, what about the prime minister? yeah, the new British prime minister
- jfk13 7y agoMany of us (I think) don't have a great deal of faith in his character.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dondawest 7y ago>If people want to know the truth about a person badly enough, they will. This is an example of the “just world fallacy.” There are many people so intelligent that they can cheat for so long and not get caught. Look at Michael Jackson. He died innocent in the eyes of the law. Or look at the Zodiac killer: he’s still out there. Whole lotta people “trying to find the truth about that person”, as you say, and after decades and decades they got nothin’. The world is not fair or just. Cheaters can cheat and get away with it, and they can do this in perpetuity. To think otherwise is to make a classic logical error. If people want to know the truth about a person badly enough, they’re fucked. Because the truth is elusive. And the world ain’t fair.
- warent 7y agoNot to veer too far off topic here but Michael Jackson died innocent because he was innocent. He was greatly misunderstood and a fire of experienced racism that was fed by the media. Here's an article you might find interesting: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_610258 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_610258
- tboyd47 7y agoThanks for sharing! Great article.
- quacked 7y agoIsn't this out-of-date after the new documentary "Leaving Neverland"?
- nicolashahn 7y agoLooks like a no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_Neverland#Criticisms_of_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_Neverland#Criticisms_o... > "[Robson and Safechuck] have previously testified under oath, under intense cross-examination, [have] maintained for twenty years a consistent story about Michael Jackson being innocent, and they come forward and completely change their story. That in itself is discrediting." Looks more like they realized they could make a bunch of money on a controversial "documentary" without getting hit with a defamation lawsuit, since MJ is dead.
- nvr219 7y agoHang on let me download my “shocked face generator” app
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThis might give some reason to care about whether politicians have had affairs. If they can't keep their wedding vows, why should we expect them to keep their oath of office?
- ChuckMcM 7y agoThere is a reason people look into infidelity when doing background checks for sensitive positions. :-) That said, the conclusion is not surprising. One measure of personal integrity is whether or not a person will do (or not do) what they "promise." This is typically referred to as "keeping your word" in English, the concept is fairly universal in my experience but different cultures refer to it in different ways. From what I have read it is a particularly strong characteristic value in "honor" cultures. Of course there are 'levels' to these sorts of promises, like "I will be home for dinner tonight" is a much less "serious" vow than "I will forsake all others."[1] And again, in my experience, people I have known have a sort of 'internal measure' of what promises they are willing to break and which ones they aren't. Ethics classes are all over these sort of discussions. As the marriage vow of fidelity is considered a fairly "strong" vow (high consequence for violating it), it seems reasonable to extrapolate that if someone was willing to violate that promise then mere 'business' promises would be similarly fair game. Always a good thing to know where your boss stands on such things. [1] A typical marriage vow promising monogamy.
- RealityVoid 7y ago> There is a reason people look into infidelity when doing background checks for sensitive positions. That reason is, mostly, vulnerability to blackmail.
- acd 7y agoUpper management is more likely to cheat in general according to the book Freakonomics. The section about bagels and that that management where more likely not to pay for their bagels in the honesty basket. “ Feldman’s bagel business is a great example of the decency and goodness of mankind. After years of delivering bagels, Paul Feldman noticed certain trends, and he gathered data on his bagel sales. This data showed that the smaller offices that he delivered to practiced honesty more often than the bigger offices.”
- bulatb 7y agoFor any situation, the statement "I want X" neatly partitions people in two. Group 1 treats it as a normative statement about the world: "I want X" means they should have X, and arrangements of the world in which they don't have X are ones in which the world has morally wronged them. This injustice means they're owed redress, which makes it morally and socially acceptable to do whatever necessary to take from the world what it wrongly denied them. Anything they do is justified; they're just reclaiming what's already theirs. Group 2 treats "I want X" as a positive (non-normative) statement about themselves, like "I had toast for breakfast." It may inform their plans and decisions but doesn't justify behavior that's normally unjustified. Everyone is in (1) some of the time, many are in (1) most of the time, and some are in (1) all the time. You can see this every day in common, totally mundane scenarios. I guess including the home and the boardroom.
- electricviolet 7y agoInteresting, is there research on this or is this a personal theory of yours?
- bulatb 7y agoJust a theory. A random example (which doesn't hinge on legal vs. right, although it seems to): It's illegal in some U.S. states to change lanes across a solid white divider when driving, especially if you're about to make a turn. There are intersections where the turn lane's solid section is so long, and the block before the intersection is so short, it's basically impossible to merge where it's legal. Especially with any traffic, there's just no time to cross before the solid. But there's room! Once you're in the solid zone, there's no one blocking you. Merging there would be illegal. There's the fully legal option to wait at the light, then go on straight, then turn at a block down the road where the solid is short. But that's inconvenient. You want to get home. But merging here would be illegal. But you want to. So people partition.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoIt's textbook dark triad entitlement. Neurotypicals understand that other people exist as separate individuals. Dark triad types are utterly self=centred and only aware of their own desires and interests. Other people either satisfy their desires or hinder them - sometimes actively, sometimes just because they're randomly in the way. The person who frustrates - or even just distracts - a dark triad individual is considered evil. They must be removed, humiliated, punished, or destroyed in some other way.
- ssttoo 7y agoDan Ariely (the "Predictably Irrational" author) also wrote "The Honest Truth about Dishonesty". There were studies there that showed cheating is a slippery slope. Once you cheat with something small, you're more likely to cheat again about something bigger.
- musgrove 7y agoScoundrels are scoundrels. Politicians will also cheat in office who cheat on their spouses, it's been clearly demonstrated. I'm not even sure why a study was needed to confirm this behavior that's been observed in broad daylight for centuries.
- dash2 7y agoHere's the original study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745062 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745062
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- irrational 7y agoI’ve never understood the thought that we can separate public and private morality/ethics. I remember during the Bill Clinton hearings, many of his supporters said that just because he is untrustworthy in his private affairs (pun intended), doesn’t mean he is untrustworthy in his public affairs. I’ve heard the exact same line of reasoning being used by Trump supporters.
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