We may have gotten the reinforcements game wrong, atleast in the context of Self-Concept of Maintenance.
According to the theory of Self-Concept Maintenance explained through “The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance” states that when people are torn between the temptation to benefit from cheating and the benefits of maintaining a positive view of themselves, they solve the dilemma by finding a balance between these two motivating forces such that they can engage to some level in dishonest behaviour without updating their self-concept, now this balance is found by the rational evaluation of this perspective, where people are honest or dishonest only to the extent that the planned trade-off favours a particular action (Hechter 1990; Lewicki 1984). In addition to being central to economic theory, this external cost–benefit view plays an important role in the theory of crime and punishment, which forms the basis for most policy measures aimed at preventing dishonesty and guides punishments against those who exhibit dishonest behavior. Now this theory of Dynamic Imaging through the Self-Concept of Maintenance explores the possibility for a bias in decision making of an individual which can be born out of his Self-Discrepency. The basic premise of self-discrepancy theory is that it is the relations between and among different types of self-beliefs or self-state representations that produce emotional vulnerabilities rather than the particular content or nature of the actual self or of any other individual self-belief. (E. Tory Higgins, Self-Discrepancy Theory: What Patterns of Self-Beliefs Cause People to Suffer?) People don’t like to think of themselves as honest, just for the sake of it. Nobody would like to even think of themselves as honest if they are completely taken into confidence of confidentiality. This white paper explores how people behave dishonestly enough not just to profit but to bridge the gap of widening Self-Discrepency, but honestly enough to delude themselves of their own integrity, in different social circles, upholding the principles that defined their Self- Concept. According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience, and behave in ways consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we aim to be like, our ideal self.
When the root cause behind honesty of an individual is dependent upon a Self-Concept that remains consistent with his/her self-image which in it’s entirety is cross dependent on the social circles he/she is interacting in, proves the dynamic characteristic of imaging. As every act has a motive, honesty or (dis)honesty also has one, but is not limited to profit. Because the Self-Concept of Maintenance can only be reasoned through the constant effort of the man to bridge the gap of Self-Discrepencies. As an Individual who is likely to perform very differently, in a social-circle he feels is dispensable, or like the actions of somebody who knows would die the next month. This clearly proves that the act of honesty or (dis)honesty is a function of dynamic imaging. Which is influenced by a great deal of self-discrepencies.
The economic implications of this theory can take shape when perhaps the largest contribution to dishonesty comes from employee theft and fraud, which has been estimated at $600 billion a year in the United States alone—an amount almost twice the market capitalization of General Electric (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 2006) can be diminished, not by the central idea of crime and punishment or by negative and positive reinforcements but by focusing on the awareness of the invalidation to self-discrepency and by reducing feeling of an individual to bridge the gap to maintain self-imaging. To begin with, this could start with acceptance, recognition of failure and to be okay with underperformance, because these are the seeds that further grow to become trees of mismatched imaging.
