Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.

that when given the opportunity, many honest people will cheat.

But because human being tend to focus on short-term benefits and our own immediate needs, such tragedies of the commons occur frequently .

While we somehow understand revenge on an intuitive level between individuals, I do suspect that companies, assuming that people are rational, completely miss and underestimate the motivation people have for revenge.

Brands communicate in two directions: they help us tell other people something about ourselves, but they also help us form ideas about who we are.

The people who need to overcome temptation to the highest degree have the hardest time doing it.

You can think about life as a battle between you and a doughnut shop. The doughnut shop wants you to eat another doughnut and pay the money, and you want to do it in the short term, but in the long term it's not good for you either financially or from a health perspective.