After watching the Freakonomics video clip on the incentives that sumo wrestlers face, it shows that there are times when rational people will choose to cheat in order to get a greater payoff.
Has there ever been a situation that you faced where the incentives before you were such that the cheaters had an advantage? Describe how you handled the situation, and how Saint Leo’s core value of responsible stewardship could help you when facing a similar situation in the future.
Freakonomics Man 1: People who are being corrupt are always trying to actively cover their trail. So corruption is, by its
nature is hard to identify; hard to prove. Murder is really great, cause almost always when someone’s murdered there’s a corpse.
Man 2: You might say "How would you know someone's cheating?" and the answer is – well it’s in the
data. I don't have to ever have seen a sumo match. I can go in the data, I can look at it, and I can tell you, with almost complete certainty, that there was rampant cheating going on.
[Muffled announcer and crowd noise.]
Narrator: In professional Sumo tournaments, the wrestlers fight one bout per day for 15 days.
Man 3: If you win 8 out of the 15 matches, you can move up in rank – half a slot. The difference of half a
rank can be maybe 5,000 dollars in paycheck a month. The respects you get in the Sumo Association. So when you talk about stuff like that, that 8th win is real critical.
Narrator: Arikshi entering a tournament’s final 15
th match with a 7 and 7 record, has far more to gain from
a victory than an opponent, with a record of say 8 and 6 has to lose. If a wrestler has 8 wins under his belt, he's guaranteed to advance. Even if he loses that last match. So he can afford to take a fall. In Japan, there's a term for match rigging – Yaocho. Many suspected that Sumo matches might be rigged. But it is nearly impossible to prove, unless you look closely at the numbers.
Man 2: Two wrestlers that I would expect to have an even match, when 1 of them needs the eighth win and the other doesn't, the one who needs it wins 75% of the time rather than 50% of the time; that is a huge deviation.
Man 1: I (8-6 wrestler) let you (7-7 wrestler) win this deciding match cuz you, my friend, are gonna fall down the pyramid if you don't. In return, the next time those 2 guys meet lo and behold, the 8-6 wrestler almost always wins those matches.