You might have seen the movie ‘The Devil Wears Prada‘. A more empirical title could be ‘The Devil Sells fake Prada’. Research conducted by Duke and MIT professor Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) found out that owning a counterfeit product significantly corrupts your morality.
Jennifer Lee wrote for the NYT: “In one of his studies, half of the 250 subjects were told that the designer glasses they were wearing were “real,” while the other half were told they were wearing “counterfeits.” They were told to do a number of tasks that seemed to be related to the glasses, like evaluating scenery. But tucked into the sequence was a math test. Researchers found that 60 percent of those who were wearing “counterfeit” glasses cheated, while only 20 percent of those wearing “real glasses cheated.“
Glasses, because the participants will either have a bright future or face the purgatory?
Read Ms Lee’s article here.
Picture by Cat Segovia
