The Cost of Integrity

When the Incentive Is Wrong

When I played peewee football, being late to practice was punished, but skipping practice was not.

If you showed up late, you had to run. If you stayed home entirely, there was no immediate consequence.

This was when I discovered incentives. The rule was meant to promote discipline, but once you were already late, the incentive was obvious: avoid practice and avoid the punishment.

That example has stayed with me ever since, though until now I was never quite sure why. I think it reveals something important about human nature. Incentives influence our behavior, but at the individual level, we still have a say in how we respond.

You see this more clearly as you get older. Someone can spend an entire conversation explaining what a good person they are and then casually describe how they ghosted someone on Hinge the week before.

It never surprises me. Telling someone you are no longer interested is uncomfortable and may involve embarrassment or conflict. Ghosting carries almost no immediate cost, but the larger cost is less visible. Each time we choose convenience over what we believe is right, we give up a small piece of our integrity.

Values require sacrifice

It is easy to say that you value honesty, loyalty, responsibility, courage, or family when those values also benefit you. The real test comes when they do not.

Values are supposed to guide our behavior when the immediate incentive points elsewhere. Otherwise, they are simply preferences we hold when circumstances make them convenient.

The husband who apologizes gives up the satisfaction of being right because preserving trust matters more than winning the argument.

You learn far more about someone from what they are willing to sacrifice for than from what they claim to believe.

Incentives are not instructions

We should pay attention to incentives. They shape behavior, and good systems should make good choices easier. We live in the real world, where our decisions have real material and social consequences.

But no system will perfectly align with the person you want to be.

There will always be moments when avoidance is rewarded, honesty is costly, and doing the right thing offers no immediate payoff. In those moments, incentives tell you what is easiest, but your values tell you what is worth doing.

A useful question to ask is:

What would I choose here if I were acting from my values rather than reacting to the immediate reward or punishment?

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