Do Advertising Pieces that Portray Brazilian Jeitinho Influence Dishonest Behavior?

Abstract

This research aimed at investigating whether watching Brazilian advertising pieces that portray a sociocultural behavioral pattern called Brazilian jeitinho would influence participant’s subsequent behavior. One carried out an experiment in which 200 subjects watched and assessed three advertisement pieces. Upon recruitment, participants were informed that they would be taking part in a raffle for a gift card. The number of tickets received per participant was defined by a die-under-cup task. The more tickets they obtained, the higher the chance to receive the prize, providing an incentive to cheat. Afterwards, respondents took part in a task that defined the number of tickets that each would receive to participate in the raffle. Independent variables consisted in the manipulation of priming of jeitinho (video content: jeitinho or neutral) and privacy of the task (with or without privacy). On the other hand, the dependent variable consisted in the result obtained when participants rolled the dices that defined the number of tickets. One found a significant difference between the groups in which privacy was manipulated, indicating that the groups that performed the task aimed at measuring dishonesty with privacy actually tended to report lower values than the ones actually obtained, entailing an effect of contrast. This finding suggests that the implementation of public policies that utilize propaganda that portrays Brazilian jeitinho could reduce engagement in dishonest behavior among Brazilians.