Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies

Deception is common in nature and humans are no exception. Modern societies have created institutions to control cheating, but many situations remain where only intrinsic honesty keeps people from cheating and violating rules. Psychological, sociological and economic theories suggest causal pathways to explain how the prevalence of rule violations in people’s social environment, such as corruption, tax evasion or political fraud, can compromise individual intrinsic honesty. Here we present cross-societal experiments from 23 countries around the world that demonstrate a robust link between the prevalence of rule violations and intrinsic honesty. We developed an index of the ‘prevalence of rule violations’ (PRV) based on country-level data from the year 2003 of corruption, tax evasion and fraudulent politics. We measured intrinsic honesty in an anonymous die-rolling experiment. We conducted the experiments with 2,568 young participants (students) who, due to their young age in 2003, could not have influenced PRV in 2003. We find individual intrinsic honesty is stronger in the subject pools of low PRV countries than those of high PRV countries. The details of lying patterns support psychological theories of honesty. The results are consistent with theories of the cultural co-evolution of institutions and values, and show that weak institutions and cultural legacies that generate rule violations not only have direct adverse economic consequences, but might also impair individual intrinsic honesty that is crucial for the smooth functioning of society

Context-dependent cheating: experimental evidence from 16 countries

Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across sixteen countries with 1440 participants. We employ a very simple task where participants face a trade-off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self-concept because of lying. Despite the incentives to cheat, we find that individuals are mostly honest. Further, international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens' honesty for our sample countries

Leadership and Persistency in Spontaneous Dishonesty

Extensive evidence shows that when given the opportunity, people cheat for monetary rewards, but only to the extent that they can keep a positive selfconcept. In this study, we investigate various factors that may influence the degree to which people can keep their positive self-concept while cheating for monetary gains. We find that authentic leadership, gender, cheating norm, experience of cheating, and expectations of others' cheating behavior have no effect on participants' spontaneous dishonesty on an abstract task. Therefore, reducing people's cheating behavior might be a long-term project for the management of fraudulent organizations and more difficult than might be expected

Deshonestidad dependiente del contexto: evidencia experimental en 16 países

Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across sixteen countries with 1440 participants. We employ a very simple task where participants face a trade-off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self-concept because of lying. Despite the incentives to cheat, we find that individuals are mostly honest. Further, international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens' honesty for our sample countries.Los diseñadores de política utilizan varios índices internacionales que caracterizan a los países de acuerdo a la calidad de sus instituciones. Sin embargo, no se ha hecho ningún esfuerzo para estudiar la forma en que la honestidad de los ciudadanos varía según los países. Este trabajo explora la honestidad de los ciudadanos en dieciséis países con 1.440 participantes. Usamos una tarea muy sencilla, donde los participantes se enfrentan a una disyuntiva entre la alegría de comer un chocolate fino y la desutilidad de tener un concepto negativo de sí mismo, por mentir . A pesar de los incentivos para engañar, nos encontramos con que las personas son en su mayoría honestas. Además encontramos que los índices internacionales que son indicativos de la honestidad institucional no presentan correlación alguna con la honestidad de los ciudadanos de nuestros países de la muestra

Context-dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries

AbstractPolicy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across 16 countries with 1440 participants. We employ a very simple task where participants face a trade-off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self-concept because of lying. Despite the incentives to cheat, we find that individuals are mostly honest. Further, international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens’ honesty for our sample countries

Commute Green! The Potential of Enterprise Social Networks for Ecological Mobility Concepts

Part 3: Open InnovationInternational audienceThe paper discusses the potential of collaborative networks (CN) to support eco-friendly commuting and create ecological benefits. It therefore develops framework conditions within the concept of social business. The objective is to show up solutions to reduce air pollution, frustration, stress caused by rush hour traffic related to the inflexible working hours. Therefore, relevant social business framework conditions to support eco-friendly behavior have been identified. As a result, the paper shows how social business can combine digitally driven empowerment of workers and corporate responsibility for human and environment. It points out the potential for ecological as well as for social benefits