Theft

Have you seen this advertising campaign for the Art Series Hotels?  As reported in The Australian, it encourages people to come and stay the night in one of the three Art hotels (The Cullen, Olsen and Blackman) all based in Melbourne. 

If you see the piece of art by Banksy, (it’s valued at over $15,000) on the walls you can steal it.  If you manage to get away with it you get to keep it.  If you get caught then back on the wall it goes. The promotions aim is to encourage people to stay at the hotel over summer by offering them the chance to be in their very own art heist, and so far has been extremely popular. 
There are good reasons why, but before I get into that I have to disclose it was our agency that helped develop this scheme.

Offering people the chance to steal, is like offering people the chance to cheat, lie, covet thy neighbours wife, eat a whole tub of ice cream, or a litany of other sins.  These are all things we know we should not indulge in, but for what ever reasons at times, have a strong desire to do.  In forensic psychology there is a well-established saying ‘bad men do what good men dream’. That is, we all have the impulses to act in anti-social ways, however, most of us have learned how to manage such urges, and not act on them.  We have realized that acting on these urges will often lead to hurting someone, or ourselves – hence we suppress that which we know we should not do. 

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