2 (On cheating, dishonesty, and scandals)

Dan Ariely’s research on dishonesty suggests that, regardless of how underhandedly we may sometimes act, most of us still want to think of ourselves as being well-meaning, upright, and decent.  This may create a certain tension between our self-image and our more opportunistic tendencies. Still, it seems that most of us can find rationalizations for various actions that we might, upon further reflection, admit are unethical by the metrics of normative moral philosophy (deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics). As Ariely has also explained, this can lead us down a slippery slope. Sometimes, what starts out as mild moral sloppiness, along with just a few seemingly insignificantly dishonest actions, eventually escalates into very unfortunate situations.
In this context, your assignment is first to identify a recent business or government scandal (or disgraceful event) that was caused by unethical and/or illegal actions which most people would condemn (at least in retrospect).   Next, your task is to carefully review the information that you have about the event in question. Then, in the context of Ariely’s arguments and based on the event that you selected short imagining and reconstructing how the situation in question might have started out and how it might have escalated to its eventual and unfortunate conclusion. Ariely).