How many people are honest and how many dishonest? According to the FBI about 5% of people are reliably criminal and about 15% are as honest as the day is long. The rest form the spectrum in between.

The 5% who are “reliably criminal” are exactly that. They don’t need a motivation to commit a crime, they just need the opportunity to gain and they’ll do it. They are predictable. The honest ones are similar—they simply will not commit crime, except by accident.

Proverbially, “honesty is the best policy”. This is not always so, but certainly it has advantages in some circumstances. A litigation survey from The Rockey Co. maintains that in litigious situations “the public may go easier on companies when they provide transparent and forthcoming communication in the face of adversity”. Sounds about right.

Well yes. But what if you are using an Internet dating site (as one in every 100 internet users do)? There’s a wonderfully revealing set of statistics in Levitt and Dubner’s book, Freakonomics, about this. Internet daters generally lie about as much as they can to get a date. Men lie about earnings and height and baldness and intentions (I’m seeking a long relationship). Women lie about weight and good looks and education. Most are not particularly gullible and will usually only reply to those who post photographs (which can also tell lies but exaggerate less than words).

And in among the ranks of the dishonest daters are to be found that precious little core of honest ones. Apparently (according to Freakonomics), 8 percent of men posting details to dating sites declare that they are married (not an attribute known to attract women) and half of these even confess to being happily married (although clearly not 100 percent happily married).

How cultural is the tendency to honesty? The news from a survey carried out in the Far East is that it varies by context and hence is strongly cultural. The survey covered residents of the Philippines, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. (Unfortunately the survey did not include Europe or the USA). Filipinos are the most likely to turn in a shoplifter (82%) or inform on someone who is being unfaithful to their spouse (52%). Indians are the least likely to use pirated software (39%). They also tie with Indonesians (at 96%) as being likely to return a wallet they’d found that contained the owner’s address. If you want to know more follow the link.

So who can you trust? The answer is: very few people. Evidence suggests that few people are good at sorting out the honest from the dishonest, no matter whether they are hiring them or marrying them. The evidence also seems to be (see Freakonomics) that company executives are less honest than the average employee (possibly that’s how they got to be promoted or hired). This should worry us.

Executives are better placed to defraud an organization than almost any other members of staff. (Almost? Yes, almost. The systems administrators are in the best position of all, of course).