Choice as justification for dishonesty

Klimm, Felix; Loipersberger, Florian

doi:10.1016/j.socec.2019.06.006

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Although the importance of the selection and sorting effects in various contexts is recognized in the large body of non-experimental literature (e.g., Bayer & Ross, 2006;Bless & Burger, 2016), only a handful of experimental studies considered these effects in relation to cheating and dishonesty. Exceptions include Klimm and Loipersberger (2019), who examined whether liars lie more if their potential victims fail to avoid the environment which enables deception. Another study showed that people who believe that they are perceived as honest adopt a deceptive strategy more frequently, and high fines for deception reinforce this selection (Konrad, Lohse, & Qari, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection Effects on Dishonest Behavior

Houdek¹,

Bahník²,

Hudík³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Many experimental studies use random assignment to identify factors influencing dishonesty. However, in real-life, people deliberately choose dishonesty-enabling environments. In two laboratory experiments, we let participants self-select in two tasks, one of which enabled them to cheat. We found that participants low in the honesty-humility were more likely to choose the cheating-enabling task. Furthermore, after choosing it, they cheated even more than when they were randomly assigned to it for the first time. When choosing the cheating-enabling task was costly, the interest in it decreased, but those who chose the task anyway cheated even more. An intervention based on social proof aimed to discourage self-selection into the cheating-enabling environment had the opposite effect. The results suggest that immoral individuals are likely to dominate cheating-enabling environments, where they cheat extensively. Interventions trying to limit the choice of these environments may backfire and lead to the selection of the worst fraudsters.

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