by Adele Gregory

Created on: July 05, 2007

If you put different people who have no critical needs to meet into an identical environment with an opportunity to steal, what might determine who takes and who doesn't?

Experiments have shown that, as a whole, people are much more likely to return too much change change given them by a small shopkeeper than extra bills dispensed by a cash machine. What differences do people make between the two? Could this hold some information about how people give themselves permission to steal?

One factor could be the personal connection - the shopkeeper is a human being looking at them while the auto-teller is a faceless machine. Another is how they consider the potential damage of their actions. The bank is perceived as much more able able to absorb such a loss than a small merchant. The bank is also seen to have much vaster resources than the person him/herself.

If it's possible to draw conclusions from this about why some people steal it might be when they don't feel much connection with who or what they're stealing from and believe the the other party has greater, possibly "unfair", resources relative to their own. This perceived inequality of resources needn't be purely financial. Some individuals might steal because they feel denied or disadvantaged in terms of power, position, status, attention, affection, popularity etc.

Related to this can be stealing as a wish to demonstrate one's power or cleverness by outsmarting "the system" or sabotaging a process. Again, the person would probably need to feel a certain degree of alienation from the system they are trying to outwit; it has become "the opponent". This attitude can arise from placing such a value on "canniness", that it can actually be considered dim, naive or self-righteous NOT to take full advantage of every opportunity.

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