Fudge Factor

The sky is falling. We don't trust our institutions, our journalists, our lawyers, our CEOs, our political leaders, our NGOS, our charities, our children, ourselves. Why should we? Most people fudge habitually, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the director of MIT's Center for Advanced Hindsight and author of the recent book, Predictably Irrational. The financial meltdown is just one result of this kind of mass cheating, he says. "Humans are predictably irrational," Ariely says. Here's his recent talk on cheating and why people do it, from TED 2009, below: